[Cialug] webdav

[Matthew Nuzum]

I've setup a shared folder using webdav. It works fine when I try to
access it (though there wre some gotcha's involved), but when someone
tries to use it from Windows its a no go. They just get prompted for
the username/password again and again.

First step was to create a standard webdav share called uploads. This
worked fine both in Windows and Linux.

Then we wanted a share to access the whole site. We wanted to access
it using the folder /website. It took some trial and error to get this
working, but it finally turned out that this configuration got the job
done:

sudo mkdir /srv/web2/web/website
sudo chown www-data /srv/web2/web/website # don't know if this is needed

## In apache config file for my site, I added these lines:
Alias /website/ "/srv/web2/"
<Location /website>
    Dav On
    AuthName "Site Admin"
    AuthType Basic
    AuthUserFile /srv/web2/.htpasswd
    ## Limit access for enhanced security
    <LimitExcept GET HEAD OPTIONS POST>
        require valid-user
    </LimitExcept>
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Location>

You'd think that it would be unnecessary to do the mkdir ..../website
but before doing that apache log had errors about
/srv/web2/www/website folder not beign found. As soon as I created
that folder I could access it using GNOME's vfs.

But Windows "Network Places" feature still doesn't see it. It just
asks you to login again and again.

If I comment out the <LimitExcept, require valid-user, and
</LimitExcept lines then it works (but there's no authentication).

Also, if I remove the Alias it works.

This configuration works fine in both Windows and Linux:
<Directory "/srv/web2/www/plogger/uploads/">
        Dav On
        AuthName "Pictures Uploader"
        AuthType Basic
        AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/.htpasswd
        ## Limit access for enhanced security
        <LimitExcept GET HEAD OPTIONS POST>
                require valid-user
        </LimitExcept>
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
</Directory>

When Windows tries and fails to login, I get nothing in the error.log
(but if I type the password wrong from Linux, I do get an entry in the
error.log saying password mismatch). The entry in the access.log looks
like this:

123.123.123.123 - - [29/Oct/2007:14:38:37 -0500] "PROPFIND /website
HTTP/1.1" 401 1190 "-" "Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/5.1.2600"

I'm mystified, anyone have any suggestions?
-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode