Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] phpWebHosting (DAV)

[Jonathon Sim]

On Thursday 21 Nov 2002 7:14 pm, Bob Crandell wrote:
> Hi Adam,
>
> Can it work as just simple file storage?  All they want to do is offer a
> safe place to give access to some files for their clients outside the
> office without opening the FTP port.
>
Phpwebhosting would be ideal for this - give it a go.  Users would access 
their files from a web interface.

If you want your users to be able to access thier files directly  then WebDAV 
might be a good solution.  In Windows (IE6) users can mount a DAV share as a 
"web folder" - In XP (and even 2000 I think) you can mount it as a drive.  
Linux can mount a dav share, KDE supports it nicely, as does MacOS X.  

In fact, if you dont care too much about stuff like locking and metadata  
(working on it, but its not ready for production yet) one thing you could do 
is simply share the directory that you setup phpgroupware to use for files 
via WebDAV.  To do this you would edit your Apache config file  
(/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf on Redhat, but it depends how Apache is 
installed).   Many of these settings may already be set for you:

* Make sure it contains something like this:
LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so
LoadModule dav_fs_module modules/mod_dav_fs.so

* and this:
<IfModule mod_dav_fs.c>
    # Location of the WebDAV lock database.
    DAVLockDB /var/lib/dav/lockdb
</IfModule>

(make sure the DavLockDB exists)

* Then add this to the bottom:

 <Directory /gwfiles>
 Dav On
 AuthType Basic
 AuthName "Your Password Please"
 AuthUserfile /etc/httpd/conf/davusers.htpasswd
# require user hoge #To limit access to one user
 </Directory>

* Make the directory groupware stores your files in is something like:
/var/www/html/gwfiles (this is if you want them to also be able to use 
groupware - nice if they dont understand WebDAV)
(replace /var/www/html/ with your apache server root)

* Now you can add users/passwords like so:
htpasswd  /etc/httpd/conf/davusers.htpasswd <username>

*  Restart apache.
And then they should be able to access the files via WebDAV.

Hope this helps.