Forum OpenACS Q&A: WebDAV support for file-storage demo available.

I have made a demo install of the file-storage WebDAV support available. To access it, first register at http://tdav.museatech.net/

The web interface to the file-storage folders is at http://tdav.museatech.net/file-storage/

You may access the WebDAV resources at http://tdav.museatech.net/dav/file-storage/

Comments welcome. Especially helpful would be tests with various clients. I have tested with cadaver, MS Web Folders on  Win2k and WinXP, and also with MS Word. Some limited testing has been done with Mac OS X clients.

The final version of this will be available for install on OpenACS 5.1 shortly. Adventurous types may try installing it themselves by checking out the file-storage and oacs-dav packages from the oacs-5-1 branch, or by intsalling from the OpenACS repository onto a OpenACS 5.1. installation.

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Posted by Nagita Karunaratne on
Hello Dave,

Just to report that I connected easily using MS Web Folders from WinXP but couldn't write as no 'write' permissons on files storage.

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Posted by Randy O'Meara on
Excellent. Worked first time on my oacs-5-1 devel instance using cadaver to read & write.

I had no problem reading from your test server with cadaver. No write perms though.

/R

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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Oops.

I granted permission to registered users so write access should work now. Thanks!

Dave

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Posted by Nagita Karunaratne on
WinXP allowed me to create a folder but not to upload a file. However was able to copy file 'prop2' file from folder 'litmus' to new folder

With cadaver/linux I was able to connect, cd to new folder, and upload a jpeg. Pretty nice!

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Posted by Hamilton Chua on
Wow. This is way beyond cool. I just can't stop imagining the possibilities :)

There is one little thing I noticed when I created a folder. I noticed that on File Storage it says New Folder but on Windows XP it's named Ham (what I named the new folder). When you click on New Folder (http://tdav.museatech.net/file-storage/index?folder%5fid=756) in file storage it does however say that

This folder is available via WebDAV at http://tdav.museatech.net/dav/file-storage/Ham

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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Ah. That is a little bug. I'll have to think about how to fix it. There are two attributes to a folder. The URL and the label.

From WebDAV on rename, i'll have to reset the label as well as the URL.

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Posted by Andrew Grumet on
Very cool, Dave.  I was able to add a network place and copy a file to tdav.museatech.net from WinXP Pro.  One curious thing...the file's name (hyakugojyuuichi.zip) is correctly assigned in this view

http://tdav.museatech.net/file-storage/index?folder%5fid=726

but shows up as "untitled" in this view

http://tdav.museatech.net/file-storage/file?file%5fid=766

Bug? Intentional?

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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Thanks Andrew, That is another oversight on the title attribute for a file. I'll fix that!
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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Nagita,

What do you mean by "upload a file" to a MS Web Folder. I think the only way to get a file into a Web Folder is to drag and drop it in or copy/paste it into the folder.

Yes, drag and drop was what I ment. Sorry.

I think it may be something wrong with my use of WinXP and I'm not very proficient with this OS anymore.

I would really appreciate if someone with Mac OS X could try to add a file to the demo server via WebDAV from the Finder and capture the communications eith ethereal or a similar package.

There seems to be something in the server response that the OS X client does not like. It is tricky to debug because I do not have OS X myself to test.

Thanks!

Dave

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Posted by Cathy Sarisky on
Hi Dave,

I got an error transfering a file from Win 2000 (IE6), but the file actually does get uploaded.  (Either drag and drop/copy and paste/save from Word.)

I see you fixed the '0 byte file' problem I've seen before.  Nice :)

One issue - When I open something from the server in Word, it comes up Read Only, so I have to rename it before saving it back to the server.  This is still much improved from how it was a month back, when I couldn't have Word save to the server at all.

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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Cathy,

Interesting. I tested with Word 2003 from Windows XP and it worked fine. I could open an existing document and save it back to the same filename.

Was the file you tried to edit one that you created or an already existing file?

What version of Word were you using?

One problem was attempting to edit one of the 0 length .doc files that resulted from a previous error. Word did not like that at all. I think Word expects something back as the content. An empty Word file is about 19kb.

I also tried editing from OpenOffice.org also and it seemed to work with Word documents.

Thanks for your help!

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Posted by Cathy Sarisky on
This was with Word 2000 (9.0.4402 SR 1).  It was a file I'd uploaded.  Any time I've tried to edit a file with Word 2000 or '97, it opens 'read only'.
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Posted by Cathy Sarisky on
More specifically - I get the save-as dialog when I try to save it.  If I leave the name unchanged, Word asks if I want to replace the existing file.  If I say yes, I get a message that "This file is read-only".
Dave,

I have just made the move from windows to Mac. I wouldn't know  where to catch the communication stream. However with Mac OS X 10.3.3, I was able to connect, create a directory and upload a Mac OS X word document and and a jpeg file, open them from the your server. All seem to work fine. This is seriously good work.

Just tell me what you want me to test?

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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Hazi,

Thanks. Jeff Davis and I debugged this yesterday. Its fixed on the demo and in CVS. The content length for 0 length files was not being set in the Content-Length header and OS X did not like that.

So, as far as we know, Max OS X support is working now.

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Posted by Steve Manning on
Dave

Really neat. I just mounted the webdav on my Linux Mandrake  10 box, created a folder and uploaded two files without a hitch.

Can I start using it to backup my database dumps :o)

    - Steve

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Posted by Deds Castillo on
Test using Konqueror 3.2.2 on Fedora Core 1 proved successful.
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Posted by Randy O'Meara on
Dave,

I'm wondering what (if any) security issues may be introduced by enabling webDAV. Do you have any specific comments on your implementation?

There is also a thread that addresses partial filtering of DAV requests to eliminate a possible DOS attack https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=175861 . Should there be some guideline that describes configuration that allows webDAV functionality while reducing or eliminating vulnerabilities?

/R

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Posted by Randy O'Meara on
Dave,

Is it sufficient to simply install webdav-support to be able to use DAV in a general purpose way, or does this service only provide DAV access in concert with file-storage?

In other words, can I simply create a symlink in my www directory to my GNU Arch (http-listing enabled) repository to create DAV-accessibility?

/R

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Posted by Jeff Davis on
I think the primary security concern is that it uses basic authentication which means your password goes in plain
text (unless you are connecting via https).
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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Randy,

You can use the tDAV module, which is part of oacs-dav and also usable without OpenACS to provide WebDAV access to filesystem directories. You will need to setup a share in the config.tcl for it. Right now you need to use ns_perm for filesystem authentication, which is not really the best solution. Bart Teeuwisse has done some testing with tDAV and Arch. You can download the standalone tDAV code from http://tdav.museatech.net/file-storage/view/tDAV/tDAV-1.0b3.tar.gz

On security, It uses the same access controls as OpenACS for file-storage, so the security is the same. As Jeff says, it uses HTTP basic authentication. This means for good security you should require HTTPS for WebDAV access. After a long discussion on the AOLserver list it was my impression that the best solution is to use WebDAV over HTTPS for security.

The oacs-dav package allows WebDAV access to any content repository folder. The only package that automatically enables WebDAV support on its folders is file-storage. The tcl procedure oacs_dav::register_folder will let you WebDAV enable any content repository folder.

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Posted by Randy O'Meara on
Thank you, Dave and Jeff.
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Posted by Nakos Budi on
Dave,
i got problem, how to make multiple user with difference account/username? my webDav running on apache 2.0*/win32.

These was running ok, but still 1 account/username.
i'm indonesian, sorry my inglish so bad.
tanks
nakos

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Posted by Rafael Calvo on
This is great!
It works perfectly on my iMac with OSX 10.3

Rafael

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Posted by Nis Jørgensen on
Works reasonably well for me on Windows 2000. It keeps asking me for my password, the word documents appear to be read-only, and I get an error when saving (but the doc is saved).
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Posted by Denis Barut on
Work perfectly, very nice integration !

Can we add a versionning note ? I didn't find a way to do it.

Thanks