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From: patrick.correia on 18 Jun 2008 14:26
I am experiencing an unexpected behavior with the Microsoft WebDAV
service and I was wondering if anyone has had a similar experience or
could suggest any fix.

I have a Windows 2003 SBS server whose netbios name is "server". I am
trying to enable WebDAV access to files on this server for users on
our VPN. (I'm trying to avoid passing CIFS traffic over the VPN.) I
set up a new web site in IIS on port 8000 and created virtual
directories in the root of this site to all the folders I want to
share on the server. I have also set access permissions so that the
site is only accessible from the LAN and VPN network segments.

I have successfully tested connecting to the server from the VPN using
Windows XP and "My Network Places", using the private IP address of
the server (i.e., setting the destination of the network place to
something like http://192.168.1.10:8000/ which routes correctly over
the VPN). I can list the directories in the root of the site and open
any real directories in the document root, but whenever I try to open
a virtual directory (for example, a virtual directory called "users"
that points to E:\Users\), I get an error message that "The folder
http://server/users is no longer available". Note that the address
listed in the error message shows the netbios name of the server,
which is different from the address I used to get to the server and is
not resolvable by DNS on the machine I am using, since it is connected
only via VPN. I tried adding an entry in the hosts file on the client
machine and this changed the error I get when I try to open the
folder: the address changes visibly in the address bar to http://server/users/,
and Explorer appears to try to list the contents of the directory but
ends up giving an error saying "Documents in this folder are not
available. The folder may have been moved or deleted, or network
problems may be preventing a connection to the server."

I also get an error if I try to open a file from a non-virtual
directory on the WebDAV server -- opening a text file, for example,
triggers an error in Notepad that "The filename, directory name, or
volume label syntax is incorrect". This error occurs regardless of
whether or not I have the hosts file entry in place.

I have tried connecting to the WebDAV server using Internet Explorer
instead of My Network Places, and I get a bare-bones directory listing
that does not include the virtual directories. However, if I manually
enter the address of one of the virtual directories (i.e., type
"http://192.168.1.10:8000/Users/" into the address bar), I am able to
see the contents of the directory and even open files.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on here?

Thanks,

Patrick Correia
patrick.correia(a)gmail.com
From: patrick.correia on 30 Jun 2008 16:21
On Jun 21, 6:47 pm, David Wang <w3.4...(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> When you create the virtual directories, did you enable WebDAV on
> them? Every time you create indirection (such as virtual directory),
> you have the chance to inherit and reset all applicable configuration.
> WebDAV happens to be one of the few that is reset.

I don't know what you mean by "enable WebDAV on [the virtual
directories]" -- I don't see any particular option to enable or
disable it. When I create a new virtual directory, the only options I
see (besides the alias and source directory) are checkboxes for Read,
Run scripts, Execute, Write, and Browse. I have enabled Read, Write,
and Browse, and ensured that under "Web Service Extensions", the
WebDAV extension is shown and set to "Allowed". Is there something
else I need to do to enable WebDAV on the virtual directories?

> It sounds like they do not have WebDAV enabled, so IIS send back the
> courtesy redirect, which would behttp://[hostname]/vdir

If this is the case, would it be reasonable to expect to see this
redirect in the access log? All I see in the log is the initial
PROPFIND on the root of the site, first with no credentials (receiving
a 401 response) and then with credentials (receiving a 207 response).
There is no subsequent request for the virtual directory, although I
did double-click on the directory name in Explorer during the test,
and never a redirect response that I can tell (in particular, there
are no 300-class responses).

Additionally, I tried accessing the server using the WebDAV tools
built in to Mac OS X 10.5.3 and it works exactly as expected -- I can
browse into the virtual directory and open files. These actions are
accompanied by the expected log entries. Any idea why it would work
from a Mac but not from Windows?

> And whenhttp://[hostname]/vdir was accessed, it appears to send back
> a non-DAV response (because WebDAV was not enabled), confusing
> Explorer. Perhaps you had Directory Browsing enabled, which generates
> an HTML response.

You are correct, I do have directory browsing enabled -- should I turn
it off?

Thanks,

Patrick Correia
patrick.correia(a)gmail.com

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