Subject: RE: ETags, was: Issues from Interop/Interim WG Meeting

From: "Clemm, Geoff" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 09:50:00 -0400

I agree.

-----Original Message-----
From: Julian Reschke [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 4:58 AM
To: Lisa Dusseault; Webdav WG
Subject: ETags, was: Issues from Interop/Interim WG Meeting

> From: [email-masked]
> [mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf Of Lisa Dusseault
> Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2002 8:14 PM
> To: Webdav WG
> Subject: Issues from Interop/Interim WG Meeting
>
> ...
> -  Be clear in spec that servers MUST do ETags. Explain how necessary
> this is to solve the lost update problem.
> ..

ETags are a good thing, correct. However, HTTP (RFC2616) doesn't require
them, RFC2518 doesn't require them, and they '*aren't* required for
interoperability. So there's no way to require them in RFC2518bis -- it
would break all servers that don't have them.

Julian

--
<green/>bytes GmbH -- http://www.greenbytes.de -- tel:+492512807760

---

From: "Eric Sedlar" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 17:47:11 -0700

As long as you don't mind a client saying something to the effect of:

"This server does not support the minimal level of functionality that
<product> requires of a WebDAV server (ETags).  We strongly discourage you
from using this server, as you may lose work."

when it points at your server, then go ahead and don't support ETags.

--Eric

---

From: Jim Luther <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 18:17:40 -0700

(the post copied below reminded me to say something)

The Mac OS X 10.2 WebDAV file system client posts a warning for Basic 
authentication over connections which are not secure.

Because RFC2518 section 1.71 says, "Since Basic authentication for 
HTTP/1.1 performs essentially clear text transmission of a password, 
Basic authentication MUST NOT be used to authenticate a WebDAV client 
to a server unless the connection is secure", we thought about 
disabling Basic authentication until our client supports secure 
connections. However, we found many servers allow access over insecure 
connections, require authentication, but support only Basic and not 
Digest. Instead of cutting off access to those servers (which do not 
comply with RFC2518), we decided to allow Basic to be used but only 
after the user clicks through a warning dialog which reads, "You have 
been challenged by a WebDAV server which is not secure. If you continue 
and supply your username and password, they can be read while in 
transit."

Once secure connection support is added to our client, we may revisit 
this issue and only allow Basic authentication when the connection is 
secure.

I should have brought this issue up during the Interop event in Santa 
Cruz, because many of the servers I tested against there did not 
support Digest authentication. Since Digest support is a MUST in 
RFC2518, it would be nice if our client could depend on it and not have 
to bother users with a warning.

- Jim

---

From: Dirk-Willem van Gulik <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 12:46:52 +0200 (CEST)

> to bother users with a warning.

Note that Apache 1.3 has most recently (2002-10-10) been patched to
interoperate with Apple's DAV client in MacOS 10.x

The issue was that the "Authorization" line contained a mix of quoted and
non quoted tokens; and apache used to barf on a non quoated uri value
which non alphanum chars. This is now fixed. Apache 2.0 was fine all along.

That should add a nice block of servers which interoperate.

Dw

---

From: Jim Luther <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 10:28:17 -0700

On Wednesday, September 18, 2002, at 03:46 AM, Dirk-Willem van Gulik 

> which non alphanum chars. This is now fixed. Apache 2.0 was fine all 

All of the tokens in our Authorization header are quoted in the Mac OS 
X 10.1.3 and later WebDAV file system clients. That bug was only in the 
10.1.1 client.

Since all of the Mac OS X 10.1.x updates were free to 10.1 customers, 
most users that haven't moved to 10.2 should be running 10.1.5.

- Jim

---

From: Dirk-Willem van Gulik <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 19:31:25 +0200 (CEST)

On Wed, 18 Sep 2002, Jim Luther wrote:

> X 10.1.3 and later WebDAV file system clients.

The UA string reported with this issue was:

	 "WebDAVFS/1.2 (01208000) Darwin/6.0 (Power Macintosh)"

> That bug was only in the 10.1.1 client.

Not sure if it is a 'bug' -> the RFC seems to allow for it.

> most users that haven't moved to 10.2 should be running 10.1.5.

Good to hear.

Dw