… is a Perl CGI script that enables the WebDAV protocol (class 1,2,3) for web server. If you need correct permissions for files and folders you can install this WebDAV CGI script and a UID/GID wrapper. The Apache module mod_dav does not support UID/GID wrapping, so this implementation fills up this gap as a (most complete) replacement.

Content of this topic:

• Features
• Download
• Installation
• Licensing
• Links

Features

WebDAV CGI …

• supports WebDAV compliance classes 1, 2 and 3
• implements CGI interface
• offers a simple web interface for file/folder management
• is wrappable to change UID/GID for file permissions other than web server permissions

My test environment:

• Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
• Apache 2.2.x
• Perl 5.8.8

WebDAV CGI is tested with following WebDAV clients (licensing):

• Firefox web browser – for folder listing, POST uploads and download tests (free)
• M$ Internet Explorer 7 – for web interface tests (commercial)
• cadaver – a Linux command line WebDAV client (free)
• nautilus – the Gnome file manager (free)
• konqueror – the KDE browser (free)
• OpenOffice (free)
• Web Folders – Windows XP & Windows Vista (build-in)
• Novell netdrive (commercial)
• BitKinex WebDAV Client (free)

Known Problems:

• Windows Web Folder tries to read folders without ‘/’ at the end and Apache responses with a redirect (Workaround: use Apache rewrite rule instead of direct folder access)
• Windows 7 does not support SSL with Web Folders (yet) and has some trouble with HTTP Basic authentication (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters\BasicAuthLevel should be 2(DWORD))
• Amaya upload does not work yet
• DAVExplorer has some trouble with XML parsing (PROPFIND) … sometimes.
• Adobe Dreamweaver has some trouble to read folders
• nautilus cannot copy folders via clipboard

Download

TuXxX Blog download : [filebase:file:file3]

Latest version: 0.3.3 (Changes: see webdav.pl)

• webdav.pl – the WebDAV CGI
  Downloads: 35
• webdavwrapper.c – a sample UID/GID wrapper: takes UID from the file/folder or if file/folder does not exists takes the UID of the authenticated user (REMOTE_USER)
  Downloads: 18

The latest BETA release is also available: webdav-beta.pl (Downloads: 8)

Installation

1. install required CPAN modules (Debian/Ubuntu package name):
   • CGI (libcgi-perl)
   • DBI (libdbi-perl) and a database driver, e.g. DBD::SQLite (libdbd-sqlite3-perl)
   • Date::Parse (libtimedate-perl)
   • File::Copy::Recursive (libfile-copy-recursive-perl)
   • OSSP::uuid (libossp-uuid-perl)
   • XML::Simple (libxml-simple-perl)

   You can do that with ‘perl -MCPAN -e "install <ModuleName>"‘ or with ‘apt-get install <PackageName>‘.

2. compile your wrapper, change the permissions and put it into your cgi-bin, e.g:
   
   gcc -o webdavwrapper webdavwrapper.c strip webdavwrapper chown root:root webdavwrapper chmod ug+s webdavwrapper cp -p webdavwrapper /srv/www/cgi-bin/

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7

   gcc -o webdavwrapper webdavwrapper.c strip webdavwrapper   chown root:root webdavwrapper chmod ug+s webdavwrapper   cp -p webdavwrapper /srv/www/cgi-bin/

3. put the WebDAV CGI webdav.pl into your cgi-bin; edit webdav.pl to setup and change permissions, e.g:
   
   cp webdav.pl /srv/www/cgi-bin vim webdav.pl chmod a+rx webdav.pl

   1 2 3

   cp webdav.pl /srv/www/cgi-bin vim webdav.pl chmod a+rx webdav.pl

4. configure your web server:
   • you can do that with rewrite rules
   • or with a handler action

   Here is an example Apache 2.x configuration:

   Action webdav-cgi /cgi-bin/webdavwrapper <Location /mywebdavspace> SetHandler webdav-cgi #necessary for PUT, MKCOL and LOCK: ErrorDocument 404 /cgi-bin/webdavwrapper #fix Windows requests to folders without slash (handle redirects): ErrorDocument 301 /cgi-bin/webdavwrapper AuthType Basic AuthName "WebDAV space" AuthUserFile /path-to-my-auth-file Require valid-user </Location> # if you want to map this to a real path, do that: # (end setup VIRTUAL_BASE) RewriteRule ^/mywebdavspace(.*) /cgi-bin/webdavwrapper \ [L,E=PATH_TRANSLATED:/srv/www/htdocs$1]

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

   Action webdav-cgi /cgi-bin/webdavwrapper <Location /mywebdavspace> SetHandler webdav-cgi #necessary for PUT, MKCOL and LOCK: ErrorDocument  404  /cgi-bin/webdavwrapper #fix Windows requests to folders without slash (handle redirects): ErrorDocument  301  /cgi-bin/webdavwrapper AuthType Basic AuthName "WebDAV space" AuthUserFile /path-to-my-auth-file Require valid-user </Location> # if you want to map this to a real path, do that: # (end setup VIRTUAL_BASE) RewriteRule  ^/mywebdavspace(.*) /cgi-bin/webdavwrapper \ [L,E=PATH_TRANSLATED:/srv/www/htdocs$1]

Licensing

GPLv3

Links

• RFC4918 – WebDAV RFC