[jcifs] Re: Davenport and Resin

[Michael B Allen]

eglass1 at comcast.net said:
> alwaysAuthenticate -- if this isn't set, authentication is only requested
> if access
> is denied to a resource.  Basically, browse anonymously until we can't
> anymore.
> This is probably what you're seeing (my best guess anyways).  This
> defaults
> to false (browse anonymously), but I have some mixed feelings about this,
> so
> in the future it may start as "true".

Yes, this works. Sort of. You must realize that on any sufficiently large
network the GUEST account will be disabled. Trying and failing with GUEST
on every request is painfully slow. And GUEST is tried twice no less.

There is still a problem however. If I browse up into a workgroup and then
drill back into a server I get ACCESS_DENIED trying to enumerate shares
with a blank screen in the web browser. If I try to force it by adding the
share name a password dialog appears but entering credentials does not
work and there is no SMB communication going on at all.

I think what might be happening is the credentials are lost or degraded to
GUEST but cannot be promoted back. I don't recommend changing credentials
like that. I think you should just negotiate credentials with IE right
from the start and associate the resulting NPA with the server that
provided the challenge as that NPA is useless with any other server. This
is what NetworkExplorer does with setProperty( "npa-" + servername ). If
the user is denied access it is natrual to just reply with 401 which will
provide the user with the Network Password Dialog into which they can
provide new credentials. Now if the user browses back to a previous server
during the same session the appropriate NPA will be used minimizing
negotiations.

> errorHandler.authenticationFailureBehavior -- this controls what happens
> when an authentication error is encountered.  Default is "authenticate",
> which requests new credentials from the user.  You can also have it
> fail in a variety of ways, or succeed silently.

Actually in the above scenario when drilling back down into a server
trying to list the shares I received nothing but a blank screen.

> For the Unicode stuff, what are you seeing?
>  There's a known issue with Resin
> and the webfolders client (see issues.txt)

With NT 4 any non-Latin1 characters are not displayed correctly and
clicking on entries that are rendered as mostly ?????? results in enless
directories or circular references. After a little while IE gets hung up.
I think it might have crashed when I logged out too. It wasn't pretty.

>, but I *think* it should work
> with the normal browser interface.

Yes it does work with the normal web interface. Looks great actually.

One other mildly annoying thing is that the web folder view is not
persistent. If I select Details or List as soon as I visit another folder
the view is reset to large icons. Is this specific to NT 4 maybe?

Mike