WebDAV bugs with ML

Same issue for me, any solution ?

No solution. Apple just don't care. The bug is still present in the bugtracker but no update, no question, no qualification, no feedback.

Solution to what? This thread is over a year old. I am unaware of any specific problems with the OS X implementation of WebDAV that would correspond to what the original poster was describing. Apple does use a slightly unusual, but completely valid, way to describe non-English file names. Perhaps Windows file servers don't accept that method. If so, that would be a bug on the Windows side.

In sorry etresoft but I think you should read the posts again. No one has mentioned any windows server or anything from Microsoft. We all seem to have problems with various unix based NAS servers. I'm not saying that Microsoft doesn't have any bugs, they might have but they can't be the culprit here since they just aren't involved ;-)

Apple has bugs, that I know and from my view they just ignore it. It might not be a bug from their standpoint. They might have a completely valid implementation according to the WebDAV specification but that doesn't help. They fail to show catalogues and files with foreign characters something that others can cope with. I reserve my right to call this a bug in Apples WebDAV implementation...

Sincerely

/Thomas

Very interesting and useful feedback from etresoft. Very respectful of others people.

Did you even tried to reproduce the issue before replying ? Is it too hard for you to read a 2 pages long thread ? Or may be you just do not have the technical skills to understand the problem encountered by many people (and not only the one who are writing in this thread).

So to resume : the bug exists, it is 100% reproducible, a case number is already opened at apple for months. No solution to a real issue. No workaround.

I have done a fair amount of research. I actually wrote a WebDAV server from scratch.

You mentioned two specific problems: random files appearing as "UNIX" files and folders with "international" names disappearing. I'm not really sure what it means to appear as a "UNIX" file. OS X is UNIX as are all of its files. Is there something more specific about what is happening with these files? For the other problem, are the folders themselves disappearing or are the "international" characters disappearing? I am unaware of any folders disappearing.

There is a well-known issue with the way file names are handled on OS X. Most people in this thread seem to be referring to that. While it is a known issue, it certainly isn't a bug or anything Apple is doing wrong. There are often multiple ways to represent the same non-ASCII character in Unicode. Both methods are completely valid. The method Apple uses dates from many years ago when processors were far less powerful. It was easier to do file name sorting when all of the accents and combining characters were actually separate glyphs. This method is now embedded deep within the OS and is not going to get changed anytime soon.

If there are servers that do not accept file names with these perfectly valid Unicode strings, then those servers are the ones with the bugs. I was aware of this issue from day one. It only took a few minutes to ensure that any decomposed Unicode strings from a client were converted into the precomposed Unicode that anything outside of OS X would expect. Writing a WebDAV server is fairly difficult. The Finder is the most common and most demanding WebDAV client. Normalising the Unicode was easy. Anyone writing a WebDAV server must test it with the Finder. This issue has been public knowledge for decades. There is no excuse for anyone to release a WebDAV server without full support for Unicode.

The Finder do present the files or catalogues with these foreign names. So far so good. It's obvious that the server presents the names in a format that the Finder accepts. But...

...as soon as you try to do something with these files or catalogues the literally disappears from the Finder and nothing happens. Opening a catalogue or file is therefore impossible. The file or catalogue magically appears again... But you still can't do anything with them just look at the nice names...

What you are saying, and forgive if I'm wrong, is that Apple does it right and a bunch of different server implementer a from several different vendors, some based on Unix some not, has done a bad job. Apple used to work but ML suddenly failed. I can't speak for all vendors but my QNAP NAS stopped working when I switched to ML, this without any changes in my NAS. Seems like Apple changed something and not for the better :-)

This was a long post just to give my 20c

rambrant wrote:

The Finder do present the files or catalogues with these foreign names. So far so good. It's obvious that the server presents the names in a format that the Finder accepts. But...

...as soon as you try to do something with these files or catalogues the literally disappears from the Finder and nothing happens. Opening a catalogue or file is therefore impossible. The file or catalogue magically appears again... But you still can't do anything with them just look at the nice names...

What you are saying, and forgive if I'm wrong, is that Apple does it right and a bunch of different server implementer a from several different vendors, some based on Unix some not, has done a bad job. Apple used to work but ML suddenly failed. I can't speak for all vendors but my QNAP NAS stopped working when I switched to ML, this without any changes in my NAS. Seems like Apple changed something and not for the better :-)

This was a long post just to give my 20c

The forum software here is flaky. I have to mix up the message I'm replying to.

I never claimed that a bunch of different server implementations from several different vendors do it wrong. The original poster is talking about one specific Windows server. I have used the Finder extensively with my own server. I just tested Unicode characters with a Linux server I recently setup running a generic version of Apache's WebDAV. I cannot reproduce the problem you describe. Those NAS devices are notorious for problems like this.

The world of WebDAV is no different than any other technology. There is a standard that eveyone strives for. Then there are market behemoths that everyone must work with regardless. If it violates the standard, it is broken. If it doesn't work with a major player, it is broken. For WebDAV clients, OS X is the big one. Windows clients have a long history of WebDAV flakiness that continues right up to today. For servers, everyone has to work with Apache. I have tested the OS X client with the Apache server and it seems to work fine. If there are any other clients or servers that behave differently, they are the ones that need bug fixes.

As I cannot get this to fail on Mountain Lion, and you claim it works on Lion, there is no way for me to test it with your configuration. I can tell you that the Finder's WebDAV client is challenging and people don't like it. It tries to bring the expected Mac experience to WebDAV and could very well push an inadequate server past its limits. But that doesn't mean it is broken.

mattias.dk wrote:

Any Mavericks users that can confirm that this problem have been solved in the GM version?

As Mavericks is still in beta, any Mavericks users cannot confirm anything.

What I can say is that users of Synology devices are frequent posters reporting problems like this. Usually the issue is with AFP or SMB. I have to wonder why you are not using one of those options instead. While I don't think the OS X WebDAV client is doing anything wrong in this case, I'm not about to claim that either WebDAV is a good protocol or the OS X client is a good implementation. If you have options other than WebDAV, I strongly suggest using them.

You should be able to look at your server logs and see exactly what access attempts are leading to the failure. You might also want to check the server error logs too.

Are there any specific paths that are guaranteed to cause the problem? Can you provide a step-by-step procedure that will reproduce it?

The problem is not synology, qnap or any other nas. The problem is apple and specifically ML.

No issue when the client is snow leopard, windows or linux !!

Do not waste your time with etresoft, this guy just do not understand or is too blind to see what all people are showing.

You have a problem with webdav, but why don't you use afp ?!

Ha ! Ha ! The answers of this type is so caricature, that it could be funny if this issue was not so penalizing.

By the way, there is nothing is qnap or synology logs because from the server point of view there is no problem. The issue is the webdav client of ML that do not handle international char.

So, at the end, even if ML is scrupulously following webdav implementation it does not allow it to integrate to very common IT where all other OS do not encounter any issue (including previous apple os).

Hi Mattias

Sorry to bump this...

Did you really solve the problem by upgrading to 10.8.5? On 10.10.1 I still have the problem...

Can someone help me reproduce the problem?