MacOS X 10.5.3 Update and WebDAV

[Frank Lowney]

Hello,

I've just noticed what appears to be a rather serious issue involving WebDAV in MacOS X 10.5.3.  Recent, earlier versions of this OS had no problems interacting with WebDAV services but, now, the Finder will lock-up when dragging a modestly sized folder of files to a WebDAV volume (ditto for individual files).  This lock-up does not affect other applications running on the client machine but the Finder becomes completely unresponsive.  The Finder cannot be forced quit or relaunched so shutdown/restart can only be accomplished via power recycling.  I have reported this to Apple via their http://bugreport.apple.com/ facility (Problem ID: 5975398 ).

So far, all of my testing has been against the now unsupported WebSTAR V server (failure), ,Mac (success) and Blackboard Vista 3.x (partial failure).  If folks here with access to MacOS X 10.5.3 could add to this list, perhaps a clearer pattern might emerge.

Right now, I suspect that changes to the WebDAV FS in MacOS X 10.5.3 were made in anticipation of upcoming changes in the .Mac service, changes that may not be standard or may be so new to the standard that WebDAV support in some systems hasn't yet caught up.

I will need to do further testing but it seems that only certain movie files trigger this effect.  Rumor has it that iPhone synching will be added to .Mac (which is WebDAV based) so this might be a case of unintended effects stemming out of an effort to protect copyrighted video files on the iPhone when .Mac synching is invoked.

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Dr. Frank Lowney  Georgia College & State University

    Senior Director for External Projects

       and Assistant to the Director, Digital Innovation Group @ Georgia College

    Web Enabled Resources

    GCSU Library and Instructional Technology Center

    E-Mail: frank.lowney@...

    Professional Pages: http://www2.gcsu.edu/library/WER/

    Personal Pages: http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~flowney

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