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Losing comments in WebDAV shared review

Forum Index > Collaboration & Commenting > Losing comments in WebDAV shared review
2008-06-13 08:30:35
rvdeede
Registered: Jun 13 2008
Posts: 19
Answered

We've recently deployed collaborative commenting with an Apache WebDAV server (as part of XAMPP 1.6.6a) and Adobe Reader 8.*, and PDF files that are Reader-enabled by means of Acrobat 8 Pro.

In the last couple of weeks we're faced with disappearing comments.

Reviewers will publish comments, other reviewers acknowledge seeing these comments when they sync, and the next moment comments disappear. Looking at the files on the WebDAV server we actually see the comment files of the reviewer in question dropping from for example 43 K to 2 K.

Strangely enough at the same time as comments have disappeared from the view of the person who made the comments, other reviewers may still see the comments for some time, and may even be able to save an archive copy containing the comments.

Has anybody experienced similar things? Any hints as to what may be causing this?

My Product Information:
Reader 8.1.2, Windows
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2008-06-17 09:51:25
#1
rvdeede
Registered: Jun 13 2008
Posts: 19
Some additional information.

I've just witnessed a cycle of events which we could run through several times and which illustrates this behaviour. Note that all of the attached manipulations are on one and the same file on which some comments have already been made, but absolutely no comments are being made in the whole process below! The numbers mentioned below are all for one and the same reviewer, who is also the one opening and closing the file.

1. File open -> 3 new/ 3 total comments
2. File close
3. File open -> 0 new/ 3 total
4. File close -> get prompted that new comments have been made and need to be published before closing the file! -> Publish, and file closes.
5. File open -> 16 new/16 total (but the "Changes since you last viewed the file briefly flashes "No new comments have been published (19 total)"!
6. File close.
7. File open -> 0 new/16 total
8. File close -> get prompted that new comments have been made and need to be published before closing the file! -> Publish, and file closes.
1. [repeat]

This cycle could be repeated several times (we stopped after 3 iterations!)

Besides the number of comments changing (steps 1 and 5 above), the other strange thing is that it will come prompting to publish new comments when absolutely no new comments have been made (steps 4 and 8 above).

Things are slowly becoming desperate ...
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2008-07-01 10:56:58
#2
sprale
Registered: Jun 26 2008
Posts: 29
I have seen similar issues with Acrobat 7 Pro reviews. Once we moved to Acrobat 8 Pro, the issue declined in frequency, but still exists. I now believe that it is our old WebDAV server. It was isolated to less than five users, but a cause was never determined.

Are you initiating a browser-based or Shared review to a WebDAV server? I have found the Shared reviews posted to a SMB share to be very reliable, only needing a VPN connection when working off-site. My challenge is supporting an external client with the same PDF review service... they really don't want to set up a SMB share for reviews, but 9 does not support web-based from what I see.
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2009-06-08 04:31:21
#3
rvdeede
Registered: Jun 13 2008
Posts: 19
As a follow-up - for the benefit of those who may find themselves facing the same issues - the solution to this problem was to use the webdav server's IP address rather than machine name when specifying the URL for the shared folder's location.

To make a long story short: when using the machine name, we found (by inspecting the packets exchanged between the Acrobat client and the webdav server) that the client was conversing with the server on 4 different ports at the same time, thereby constantly overwriting the comments file on the server with incomplete or empty comments over the different ports, sometimes with split-second speeds, hence the symptom of comments appearing and disappearing.

A similar problem (though not exactly the same) is described in the online collaboration troubleshooting section for Acrobat 8 as a potential "IP translation problem" due to DNS configuration.

Recommendation is to always use the server IP rather than the machine name, even if your DNS is not at fault.
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