Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two

Hack #62. Share Files and Directories over the Web

WebDAV is a powerful, platform-independent mechanism for sharing files over the Web without resorting to standard networked filesystems.

WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) lets you edit and manage files stored on remote web servers. Many applications support direct access to WebDAV servers, including web-based editors, file-transfer clients, and more. WebDAV enables you to edit files where they live on your web server, without making you go through a standard but tedious download, edit, and upload cycle.

Because it relies on the HTTP protocol rather than a specific networked filesystem protocol, WebDAV provides yet another way to leverage the inherent platform-independence of the Web. Though many Linux applications can access WebDAV servers directly, Linux also provides a convenient mechanism for accessing WebDAV directories from the command line through the davfs filesystem driver. This hack will show you how to setup WebDAV support on the Apache web server, which is the most common mechanism for accessing WebDAV files and directories.

Installing and Configuring Apache's WebDAV Support

WebDAV support in Apache is made possible by the mod_dav module. Servers running Apache 2.x will already have mod_dav included in the package apache2-common, so you should only need to make a simple change to your Apache configuration in order to run mod_dav. If you compiled your own version of Apache, make sure that you compiled ...