MWS:WebDAV

From OpenSource

Dav works, so you can mount the file system of your phone to your laptop using your favourite webdav client. However there have been some problems so you probably do not want to edit files directly but use dav for uploading and downloading files.

Contents 1 Setting Up 1.1 Account 2 Exporting a Directory 3 Mounting 4 Caveats

Setting Up

The following is valid for version 0.9.2. Some things may be different on more recent versions.

Account

The default dav-setup requires logging in, so the first thing to do is to create an account. You want to do that anyway, since quite a few of the concept demos require logging in. The accounts are located in the file C:\Data\Apache\conf\users.

If you have a text-editor on your phone, you can open the file directly, but otherwise the most straightforward approach is to use PC-Suite and drag that file to your PC, do the editing there and drag it back.

The default content of that file looks like:

#
# The format is 
#
#    username:password
#
# Just remove the # from the line below and people will be able to log in 
# using "hello" as username and "world" as password (both without quotes).
# Or add usernames and passwords to your liking.

#hello:world

So, simply add an account name of your choice, with accompanying password. Note that the password is specified in cleartext.

Warning The account name and password travel unencrypted over the network. So do not use any "valuable" account names and passwords, for instance, ones that you use elsewhere.

Exporting a Directory

If you open the file C:\Data\Apache\conf\httpd.conf you will find, towards the end of the file, the following section:

#
# This alias and the accompanying Dav directives allows you to mount a
# read-write view of the Apache directory. This comes in handy when you
# need to edit or add configuration and other files.
#
Alias /edit "C:/data/apache"

DavLockDB DavLock
<Location /edit>
  Dav On
  Require valid-user
</Location>

That section first says, that the URI /edit corresponds to the file-system directory c:\data\apache. That is, that directory is accessible as http://your-url/edit.

The Location section further down specifies that WebDAV is enabled for that location, that is, the directory c:\data\apache, and that, in order to access that location, you must be a known user. That is, a user that is specified in the c:\data\apache\conf\users file. Effectively, that line means that you have to log in. You can replace valid-user with a specific account if you want to further restrict who can access that directory.

Mounting

In order to mount that directory on your phone to your PC, you need a WebDAV client. Internet Explorer has built-in support for dav, so you can use that directly. The following instructions work with IE6.

Invoke File->Open and enter the URL of your mobile, followed by /edit, and remember to check the Open as Web Folder checkbox.

Then press Ok. After a while you should be greeted with a login dialog.

Enter a user name and password that you defined earlier. Again after a while, you should see the following.

If you have a webdav aware editor, you can in principle edit the files directly, but it is safer (and faster) to drag files to your PC, edit them there, and drag them back.

Caveats

• Even though you now have two different routes to your mobile - one using plain HTTP and the other using WebDAV - it does not mean that they are totally independent from each other. Configuration settings affecting the htdocs directory hierarchy may also have an impact when you access the directory using WebDAV.

• If you make configuration changes via WebDAV, you may inadvertently disable WebDAV access for yourself. So, keep PC-Suite handy.

• From a security perspective it's very dubious to provide remote direct access via a web server to configuration files that affect the behavior of that very same web server. Much safer to restrict access to just htdocs or to have a dedicated directory for WebDAV file up- and downloading.