WebDAV timeouts and ClientAbortException/SocketException

[schipmolder]

Hi,

I'm running a 4.0.d server with users having access to the repository via WebDAV.
I also have a few Mac clients, some of which run Mac OS X 10.6 and some 10.8.

When a 10.6 client mounts the share and either opens a folder or selects an image I get SocketExceptions (caused by ClientAbortExceptions) on the server end.
I looked at the http communication between client and server and noticed that the Finder in OS X tries to load a thumbnail/preview of the image with a GET request to the image's URL which first fails at least twice and then succeeds. These two failures seem to match the exceptions I see on the server end.

Exceptions: https://gist.github.com/4030647


When a 10.8 does the same thing the whole server seems to grind to a hold for about 5 minutes with 'Still busy' messages. At this stage even share won't load and the server becomes pretty much unresponsive.
After the 5 minutes timeout the server slowly comes back to life and it tries to do something with an authentication handshake several times "Throttled authentication handshake, waiting for reconnect timeout on: http://localhost:8080/alfresco/s" which all throws Exceptions as well.
Finally these Exceptions seem to stop as well and then I get the same ClientAbortException/SocketExceptions I was seeing with 10.6.
By now (about 10 minutes after mounting the webdav share!) the server has fully recovered and is operational again.


Exceptions: https://gist.github.com/4031099


Now I did some troubleshooting and noticed that on 10.6 the Finder in OS X tries to load a thumbnail/preview of the image with a GET request to the image's URL which first fails at least twice and then succeeds. These two failures seem to match the exceptions I see on the server end.
Once the image has been loaded a call is made to the same URL, but this time as PROPFIND request and this always seems to succeed immediately.
This is obviously not ideal but at least the server doesn't freeze like it does in 10.8…

I also tried increasing the memory on the server (currently at 8G), checked if SMB and/or FTP work ok which they do and tried different client machines.


Does anybody have any idea what i can do to resolve this so we can actually use WebDAV?

I have considered using SMB or FTP instead, but the problem with SMB is that, if i understand correctly, it doesn't allow synchronised LDAP users to connect. And FTP is not really an option either as you can only mount a FTP share as read-only in the Finder.

Thanks
Skip

[schipmolder]

Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing these exceptions?

[schipmolder]

Hmm, I was hoping someone else would be using WebDAV as well and possibly come cross the same issues

If anyone else is using WebDAV without issues with Mac clients could you please let me know?