Some interesting revelations on the HTTP/HTTPS PUT issue. First, the 7.52
Win32 binary (from an older CVS snapshot) does perform client authentication
via certificate and HTTPS PUT to either Netscape (iPlanet) Web Server (IWS)
or IIS. The 7.6 Windows binary and the current CVS just don't want to do it
and hang after 8KB are sent. The authentication is proper, and the
certificate is accepted, but curl hangs on the transfer.

Second, IWS doesn't like curl (any version) uploads via HTTP PUT whatsoever.
Even with older 7.52 binary, which works perfectly with MS IIS, the
resulting file on IWS becomes corrupted during transfer. The file
corruption appears to be consistent at the 8KB point in the file. I've
uploaded 20MB files, and they always lose about 15 bytes at the 8KB point.
The rest of the file is actually fully in tact.

From what I can find, Netscape uses a proprietary API used for uploading
files to their server. This is apparently why non-Netscape browsers are
prompted to download/run a Java applet to accomplish this. Details are at:

http://developer.iplanet.com/docs/examples/java/file_uploading.html

One of their three listed methods, NSAPI, apparently includes some C wrapper
functions that could be candidates for future inclusion in curl, should you
desire to support IWS more fully. These are detailed at:

http://developer.iplanet.com/viewsource/bosamiya_nsapi.html

I haven't done "conclusive" analysis on the problem, but those are my
initial findings, and I understand it's probably not worth the effort to
support what appears to be a proprietary requirement. If anyone has found
out differently working with iPlanet/Netscape Web Server, I'd be anxious to
compare notes.

Frank
Received on 2001-02-07