2007Beta: Shared notebooks on Apache WebDAV?

[jeffrey_t_b]

Hello, folks. I've been trying out the 2007 beta 2, and so far there are
many excellent improvements.

But I've ran into some trouble using OneNote's shared notebooks on a WebDAV
server running on Apache 2.0.54. OneNote seems to not be able to find .one
files underneath a directory, and, from the server logs, it looks like it may
not be asking for files correctly.

I've attached the WebDAV server logs for an attempt to open a notebook from
the location /dav/notebooks/testdav2. In the File Open box, I was able to
browse to the folder, and see all of the other folders on the server. But,
when I selected the folder to be opened as a notebook, OneNote said that
there were no sections in it.

The same problem had occurred when I had originally created the shared
notebook. I had used a template (the "Shared Notebook - Group Project"), but
OneNote claimed that there were no sections in it. (It had put the files up
on the server properly.) Subsequently, it would not connect to the server to
sync.

I'm not sure if this is the right place to report such things. If anyone
knows better, let me know.

Apache log file enteries of interest (for the File Open):

192.168.0.148 - jb [13/Jun/2006:17:55:30 -0700] "PROPFIND /dav/notebooks/
HTTP/1.1" 207 847 "-" "Microsoft Data Access Internet Publishing Provider DAV"
192.168.0.148 - jb [13/Jun/2006:17:55:30 -0700] "PROPFIND /dav/notebooks
HTTP/1.1" 207 2584 "-" "Microsoft Data Access Internet Publishing Provider
DAV"
192.168.0.148 - jb [13/Jun/2006:17:55:33 -0700] "PROPFIND
/dav/notebooks/testdav2 HTTP/1.1" 207 856 "-" "Microsoft Data Access Internet
Publishing Provider DAV"
192.168.0.148 - jb [13/Jun/2006:17:55:33 -0700] "HEAD
/dav/notebooks/testdav2/ HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Microsoft Office Existence
Discovery"
192.168.0.148 - jb [13/Jun/2006:17:55:33 -0700] "HEAD
/dav/notebooks/testdav2/ HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Microsoft Office Existence
Discovery"
192.168.0.148 - jb [13/Jun/2006:17:55:33 -0700] "HEAD /dav/notebooks/
HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Microsoft Office Existence Discovery"
192.168.0.148 - jb [13/Jun/2006:17:55:33 -0700] "HEAD
/dav/notebooks/testdav2/ HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Microsoft Office Existence
Discovery"
192.168.0.148 - jb [13/Jun/2006:17:55:33 -0700] "HEAD /dav/notebooks/
HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Microsoft Office Existence Discovery"
192.168.0.148 - jb [13/Jun/2006:17:55:33 -0700] "HEAD
/dav/notebooks/testdav2/ HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Microsoft Office Existence
Discovery"

 

[jeffrey_t_b]

After poking around a bit more on this, I think that the problem has to do
with shared notebooks on a secured (HTTPS) WebDAV site. It appears as though
OneNote occasionally makes unsecured (HTTP) requests, which of course return
errors. (One file that it requests in an unsecured way is the onetoc2 files,
which I think lists the section files in a given notebook. That seems to
explain the phenomena below.)

I've submitted a bug (134062) on the connect site.

 

[David Rasmussen [MS]]

Thanks for the bug! It would surprise me that we're doing that given we just
use the URL given to us, but there are several layers below us in the HTTP
stack so we'll stake a look.

A couple of other things to look out for:
- Usually you need to make sure that the following types are registered mime
types on the server, .one, .onetoc, .onetoc2 (if using OneNote 2007 beta),
..onetmp
- You WebDAV server needs to support locking (many don't) or you will have
problems.

 

[jeffrey_t_b]

David -

Thanks for the response! The mime type thing was a good idea... I see KB
828610 on this for ON2003. However, it didn't seem to help. Apache DAV
support does include locking.

The interesting thing is that everything works fine when using regular HTTP
(rather than HTTPS).

Thanks for looking into the problem... I'd be curious to hear if anything
comes of it.

 

[David Rasmussen [MS]]

We will definitely look into this. It may be that the dav redirectory below
is stripping this in some transformation between UNC path format and
https://

 

[sabin1001]

I'm actually finding that it doesn't work fine when using HTTP. I can create
a new notebook on the remote server and it says that it's been created, and
it creates the folder on the server, but never puts any files onto the
server, and complains that it cannot sync the notebook.

If this is possibly due the mime type steps you recommend, what do I need to
tell my host company to setup?

 

[Franz12]

hi, I have the same problem now with onenote 2007 B2TR. I attempt to share
notebooks on a server with a webdav account. it is a regular win2003 server
with webdav enabled. I can browse the files and edit txt files, too.
Nevertheless, onenote shows the same behaviour as described by jeffrey. Any
idea? Can you specify a little bit more what I could check on our win2003
server to assure that all is enabled what onenote needs? As far as I can
jugde, it is all enabled, because I can open files, edit and save them in the
webdav account.
Thanks!! Franz