WebDAV only allows user webdav to log in?

[Cocoreccho]

So the 9.3 is out, and I have been so excited about all those new features. While playing around the new WebDAV support, I got a question about it and really hope someone could help me.

It just seems that FreeNAS only allows user webdav to access the WebDAV shares added to your volumes. Is this really the case? If so, then I have to say this is quite disappointing since it does not keep certain directories from guest users. I may haven't fully explored the feature, but I am really struggling to find a solution.

Say we have three directories: Documents, Music, and Public. We also have two users: admin and guest. Admin has full access (read and write) to all the directories, but guest is only allowed to visit Public. This is how I set up my FreeNAS, and the permission also works when you are out (outside local network) through FTP. However, having been playing around the WebDAV for hours, I can't find a way to access my server through WebDAV while keep the permissions I set up. It seems that the only user allowed to access your WebDAV is the user webdav with some arbitrary password. Can admin and guest access the WebDAV shared folder using their own username and password?

Any information will be helpful. And I appreciate your time!

 

[Suraj Ravichandran]

Sir it is very difficult to implement webdav with multiple users due to underlying restrictions of the webserver (in this case Apache, which is way more co-operative for webdav than nginx, and yes I had tried both of them).

You are correct in the sense that this can only be used by webdav users.

Will try to add this feature (if at all possible) in the future, but as of now this is the best I could come up with.

Thanks for your interest and also for using 'webdav' on freenas! (I get excited since it is my pet project).

If you face any other problems please feel free to report back.

 

[kjp4756]

OS X server 10.10 uses Apache for WebDAV and it supports multiple users. I'll do some digging around later and see how exactly it is done.

 

[Cocoreccho]

Sir it is very difficult to implement webdav with multiple users due to underlying restrictions of the webserver (in this case Apache, which is way more co-operative for webdav than nginx, and yes I had tried both of them).

You are correct in the sense that this can only be used by webdav users.

Will try to add this feature (if at all possible) in the future, but as of now this is the best I could come up with.

Thanks for your interest and also for using 'webdav' on freenas! (I get excited since it is my pet project).

If you face any other problems please feel free to report back.

Thank you for your great work! I wasn't very sure about whether I set it up the right way. I didn't mean any disrespect since I am not a developer and have no idea how difficult it can be. Anyway, I gotta say it is a great progress from 9.2 to 9.3 with the support of WebDAV. I have been using FreeNAS for many years. It is a great project because of amazing programmers like you!

Thanks again for the amazing work you've contributed and your confirmation to my doubt.

 

[mrreload]

WebDAV is a great feature. Would it also be possible to add an anonymous share? I know, not yet, but hopefully in future?
This would be truly helpful for PXE booting and using fetch=http in the config. Currently I have setup apache in a jail to serve out the files I need.

 

[emk2203]

Sir it is very difficult to implement webdav with multiple users due to underlying restrictions of the webserver (in this case Apache, which is way more co-operative for webdav than nginx, and yes I had tried both of them).

You are correct in the sense that this can only be used by webdav users.

Will try to add this feature (if at all possible) in the future, but as of now this is the best I could come up with.

Thanks for your interest and also for using 'webdav' on freenas! (I get excited since it is my pet project).

If you face any other problems please feel free to report back.

Thanks for your efforts on this, webdav is much appreciated. With 5 minutes setup I can now play my video files from where ever I go, just in a browser, very nice!

Webdav for multiple users would definitely be a needed feature for me as well. So, +1 for multiple users, please.

One other thing: If filenames have non-ASCII characters, they get mangled by the WebDAV server. Is there a way to fine-tune this?

Example: A directory named Mini-Göttinnen looks like Mini-Göttinnen/ in the browser. The browser interpretes the page as Windows-1252, when it should clearly be UTF-8.

 

[Osiris]

Another addition. The webdav password seems to have some restrictions in size and or characters.
It would be cool if the manual / support pages would say which ones.

I tried 17 char passwords with an @ symbol in them, for instance.
They are accepted when setting them in the freenas gui - services - webdav, but not accepted when logging in to the webdav http page.

 

[Greg W]

This may be a bit more than can be easily done, but ideally I'd love to see WebDAV access to CIFS shares on the FreeNAS box using the built-in Active Directory service for authentication. We're currently using NetWare and they can do WebDAV access through Apache and give access to the file system and authenticate against eDirectory. That might be a tall order to fill, but would be ideal for us migrating away from NetWare. We have a number of remote users who use a WebDAV client (WebDrive) to map a drive to the NetStorage WebDAV server and get access to all their files and folders. If FreeNAS could do the same in theory we could just change the URL to match and other than having to use a different password potentially no client changes would be necessary. I haven't tried it currently but I don't think a CIFS share and WebDAV share can currently map to the same location on FreeNAS without breaking one or the other.

 

[Srikanth K Kota]

+1... I love see this configured so I share with my other family members who are far away..

 

[emk2203]

+1 for @Greg W's suggestion. Ideally, WebDAV authentication should be handled by the built-in Active Directory.