# davfs2 1.1.1
# FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q: What are these files with size 0 and date of 1970-01-01?
A: WebDAV allows to lock files that do not exist, to protect the name
   while you are preparing a file for upload. This "locked-null-resources"
   will show as files with size 0. This is ok as long as the locks are
   released some day.

Q: But this size-0-files don't disappear. How can I get rid of them?
Q: Some files can not be accessed because they are locked. But I know for
   sure that nobody uses them.
A: It can happen that locks are not released:
   - An WebDAV client may crash.
   - The network connection may get down before the locks are released.
   - ...
   How davfs2 tries to handle this:
   - It sets a timeout for locks, when they should be realesed automatically.
   - It sends a lock-owner property, so it can identify its own locks.
   - Whenever it discovers that a file is locked, it tries to discover whether
     it owns the lock. In this case it will reuse the lock and then release it.
   But not all servers will support this.
   Sometimes only the administrator of the server may be able to free stale
   locks. It would be a good idea if the server implements an administrative
   timeout for locks, because it is impossible to make sure that all clients
   will allways release locks properly.

Q: Why can't I access Novell NetStorage with davfs2? It works with KDE and even
   with Microsoft WebFolders.
A: NetStorage refuses to work with clients that do not support cookies. davfs2
   does not support cookies. The reason is that neon dropped cookie support
   because it was autdated and they had not yet time to rewrite it.
   There is a workaround in using the old neon 0.24 library. Please look at
   http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=30502324&forum_id=1351
   I will try to prepare a proper patch soon.
   But I think it is really a fault of Novell NetStorage. WebDAV does not, and
   surely will not in the future, demand for cookie support. NetStorage just
   must not insist on this.

Q: When I try to save may backups to the WebDAV Server, davfs2 creates another
   copy on disk, so I run out of disk space. Why does dafs2 do this?
A: davfs2 will allways create a local copy of all files moved between the local
   computer and the server. There are several reasons for this:
   - The coda kernel file system needs this. It will only read and write to
     local copies.
   - Although HTTP allows for incremental downloads of files, as far as I can see,
     there is no way to upload files incrementally. So davfs2 needs to get the
     whole file from the application before it can send it to the server.
   davfs2 really is not a replacement for network file systems like nfs.

Q: When mounting a file system, I usually get an error message saying:
   "Connection failed, mounting anyway.
      File system will only be usable when connection comes up."
   What does this mean?
A: Propably everthing is ok.
   When mounting, mount.davfs sends a first request to the server, to get the
   listing of the root directory. This request occasionally times out, mostly
   due to slow DNS name resolution.
   mount.davfs will mount the file system and usually the next request will be
   successful. This message is just an information in case the connection will
   not come up.
