How to WebDAV on Ubuntu 9.04 Server

WebDAV is a file manager that running on web server. You can access it like on your desktop. Easy and enjoyable.

Install Ubuntu 9.04 server as usual and select LAMP and OpenSSH when asked for choice. You can also install vsFTPd if you want to but it is optional.

Step 1 :

sudo a2enmod dav_fs
sudo a2enmod dav
sudo a2enmod dav_lock

sudo a2dissite default

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Step 2 :

To create a virtual host for the WebDAV.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/webdav
chown www-data /var/www/webdav

sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /etc/apache2/sites-available/webdav

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/webdav

Make the a portion of the file as the following :


....
DocumentRoot /var/www/webdav

   Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
   AllowOverride None
   Order allow,deny
   allow from all


   DAV On
   AuthType Basic
   AuthName "webdav"
   AuthUserFile /var/www/.passwd.dav
   Require valid-user
   DavMinTimeout 600
   
      Require valid-user
   

....

Step 3 :

sudo htpasswd -c /var/www/.passwd.dav samiux

chown root:www-data /var/www/.passwd.dav
chmod 640 /var/www/.passwd.dav

suod chmod -R 0777 /var/www/webdav
sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/webdav

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Step 4 :

To test if WebDAV works or not.

sudo apt-get install cadaver

sudo cadaver http://localhost/

If you got “dav:/” prompt, enter “quit” to quit. Otherwises, fix the problem.

Step 5 (Windows only) :

Download NetDrive at http://www.netdrive.net/ and set it accordingly. The port should be 80.

Now you can access your WebDAV server from Windows.

Step 6 (Ubuntu only) :

Go to “Place” > “Connect to Server“. Select “WebDAV (HTTP)“. Enter the IP of your WebDAV server and then press “Connect“. Submit the username and password. An icon will be displayed on your desktop. Double click it and go.

Now you can access your WebDAV server from Ubuntu.


OpenOffice
If you open the OpenOffice files on the WebDAV by clicking, you can only open it in read only mode. However, there is method to overcome this problem. You open OpenOffice Write (for example), click the “Open file” and at the “Name of file” enter the following :

vnd.sun.star.webdav://192.168.0.100/openoffice_readonly_on_webdav.odt

Now you can edit and save it on WebDAV.

Limitation of WebDAV

You can paste a file onto WebDAV directly but there is a file size limitation, that is, the file should be less than 1GB. If you want to paste a file larger than 1GB, I suggest to use FTP instead.

Make sure to change the ownership of the files that you have uploaded by FTP.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/webdav


Enjoy ubuntu... ;)