Simon Zambrovski

According to “Computer Zeitung”( …), SOA-Boom starts in 2008. Please make an entry in your personal schedule.

And this link is for this blog, in order to be listed. For a blog only 25 clicks or 7$. As Dire Straits said “Money For Nothing…”.

A website for displaying the internet map. In order to be displayed one require 150 clicks or 15$. Funny idea… You can support zonakaifa.de by clicking on the following link:

The postbank uses firewalls with invalid set-up. All ICMP-Traffic is dropped. This causes problems while accessing the site over a Linux 2.4 Router with NAT (The problem background can be found in German here: http://portal.suse.de/sdb/de/2001/11/cg_pmtu2.html)

Basically, it is the handshaking of the packet size based on MTU of PPPoE by packets with DF-flag (Don’t fragment) set. This handshaking is based on special ICMP command.

Today I was suprised about the bad compatibility of the WebDav system component. I wanted to upload some data on an Linux Apache Web Server with installed Web-DAV module, with Authorization based on AuthType digest from my WindowsXP workstation.
In following I describe the activities needed for that simple operation:

1. Opened “Network neighbourhood” added new Connection, entered a server name and directory.
2. A dialog appered in order to provide the auth-information. Entered my username and my password.
3. Same dialog apperead again, my username was replaced with servername\username
4. Asked the system administrator => the webfolder doesn’t work with digest authorisation, please use another client
5. Tried Eclipse Web-Dav integration, but forgot the trailing “/” in the directory name => Error : Bad request.
6. Entered in google: webdav client windows.
7. Took the first link: http://www.webdav.org/projects/
8. Scrolled a little, selected “WebDav Explorer” and downloaded
9. The zip-File contained of severeal batch files and a jar archive.
10. Started the program => Couldn’t understand how to use it in 2 minutes, managed to copy one file, but not a group of files.
11. Returned to google and selected the second link (FTP Client with WebDav support from bitkinex.com)
12. Downloaded a trial version and installed it.
13. A huge two-window application appeared on the screen. Managed to input the server data.
14. Connected. Tried to copy files. => Errors during copy. The process took 2 minutes. Checked if the files were there => No files on server.
15. Used server property (context pulldown-menu) to discover the dialog “Paths on server”
16. Entered my directory, reconnected.
17. Copied files and verified the existence => Files were there. The program is working only 30-days in a trial version.
18. Went back to google and entered “windows commander webdav” in order to find a plug-in for “Total Commander”.
19. Found a plugin and downloaded it and installed.
20. Created a new connection but forgot the trailing “/” again. => Error : Bad Method.
21. Analysed the log => TotalCMD tries to execute PROPFIND “/”.
22. Downloaded the code of the plugin. Opened the plugin in Visual Studio.
23. Found the corresponding place, on which the plugin calculates the path.
24. Understood, that the trailing “/” is neede in the path
25. Created a new connection with a trailing “/” after the directory name. => It worked fine, I could transfer files.
26. Tried the same thing in Eclipse adding a trailing “/” to the path. => It worked too.

So my questions are:

1. Is it that difficult to verify the trailing “/” in a tool?
2. Why so many people supply so bad tools, that the extensive reading of manual is needed in order to find out how the program works?