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davfs2 1.2.2 2008-01-24 |
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# Copyright (C) 2006, 2007, 2008 Werner Baumann |
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# Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are |
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# permitted in any medium without royalty. |
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS |
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Q: What are these files with size 0 and date of 1970-01-01? |
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A: WebDAV allows to lock files that do not exist, to protect the name |
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while you are preparing a file for upload. These "locked-null-resources" |
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will show as files with size 0. This is OK as long as the locks are |
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released some day. |
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Q: But the size-0-files don't disappear. How can I get rid of them? |
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Q: Some files cannot be accessed because they are locked. But I know for |
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sure that nobody uses them. |
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A: It can happen that locks are not released: |
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- An WebDAV client may crash. |
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- The network connection may get down before the locks are released. |
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- ... |
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How davfs2 tries to handle this: |
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- It sets a timeout for locks, when they should be released automatically. |
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- It sends a lock-owner property, so it can identify its own locks. |
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- Whenever it discovers that a file is locked, it tries to discover whether |
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it owns the lock. In this case it will reuse the lock and then release it. |
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But not all servers will support this. |
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Sometimes, only the administrator of the server may be able to free stale |
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locks. It would be a good idea if the server implements an administrative |
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timeout for locks, because it is impossible to make sure that all clients |
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will always release locks properly. |
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Q: When I try to save may backups to the WebDAV Server, davfs2 creates another |
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copy on disk, so I run out of disk space. Why does davfs2 do this? |
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A: davfs2 will always create a local copy of all files moved between the local |
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computer and the server. There are several reasons for this: |
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- The coda kernel file system needs this. It will only read and write to |
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local copies. |
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- davfs2 is not able to do incremental uploads. So davfs2 needs to get the |
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whole file from the application before it can send it to the server. |
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davfs2 really is not a replacement for network file systems like nfs. |
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Q: When I unmount a davfs2 file system, umount blocks and it sometimes takes |
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hours before it returns. |
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A: This is intentionally. umount should not return before all cached data is |
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saved to the media. The time needed depends on the amount of data and the |
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transfer rate. It is almost unnoticeable for a hard disk, some minutes for |
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a floppy, and for davfs2 it varies with the quality of the connection. |
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Note: You should always unmount davfs2 file systems before you shut down |
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your system. On shut down mount.davfs will usually be killed |
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regardless of the time needed to save data. |
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Q: Displaying large directories with nautilus or konqueror is very, very slow. |
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Is there a way to speed this up? |
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A: Reason is that this programs open every file in a directory to evaluate the |
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file type. mount.davfs has to download them all. Even if the files are |
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cached, it will have to ask the server whether there is a new version. |
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You may try the configuration option 'gui_optimize'. This will not help when |
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you visit the directory for the first time, but when the files are already |
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in the cache it will reduce response time. |
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O: When I mount a resource form Microsoft IIS, I can create new files, but when |
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I try to open them I get an error saying 'File does not exist'. This does not |
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happen when the file is named something.txt or something.doc, but it happens |
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for instance with files named something.odt. |
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A: Microsoft IIS only serves files with extensions and MIME-types that are |
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registered with IIS (or Windows). But when files are created it does not apply |
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this restriction. So you can create a new file with e.g. OpenOffice.org and |
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when you try to open it again, IIS will tell it can't find it. But it really |
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exists in the servers file system. |
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By default, only extensions used by Microsoft are registered (because you do |
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not want to use file formats that are not owned by Microsoft.). To change |
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this you have to register all file extensions you want to use. You may also |
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register a wildcard extension. |
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- Open the microsoft management console for IIS. |
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- Select the WebDAV folder within IIS you want to use. |
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- Right click and choose: Properties->HTTP-headers->MIME-types->new |
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- Edit '*' as extension and 'application/octet-stream' as MIME-type. |
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- Apply the changes. |
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- Select your IIS (the server as a whole, not just the WebDAV folder). |
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- From the menu choose actions->all tasks->save configuration on disk |
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- Restart IIS. |
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Please Note: |
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I had to retranslate the names of menu items from Microsoft's German. So the |
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exact naming in English might be different. |