Samba Shared Folders over a WAN link

[Ow Mun Heng]

On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 12:35, Alan Horn wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, Ow Mun Heng wrote:
> 
> >> Is apache with webdav and SSL an option instead here ?
> >
> >
> > I don't get the solution. Can you elaborate? Meaning using an Upload 
> >form or something?
> >
> >
> 
> Windows XP (and to a certain extent other windows platforms although I'm 
> not sure of the compatibility matrix), allows you to 'add a remote 
> location' as a folder.
> 
> You can add a webdav aware webserver URL as this location.
> 
> On the server side, you have apache with mod_dav and mod_ssl (the SSL for 
> security as I think you're trying to achieve). Then the location 
> definition in your httpd.conf file could be something like :
> 
> Alias /webdav/foobar /path/to/foobar
> <Location /webdav/foobar>
>    DAV On
>    AuthPAM_Enabled on
>    AllowOverride None
>    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
>    AuthType Basic
>    AuthName "Foobar File Share"
>    Require group webdavusers
> </Location>
> 
> 
> You open the location on your windows desktop by double clicking just the 
> same as you would any folder.
> 
> The webserver will authenticate you (probably using PAM, but it's up to 
> you how you configure this part)
> 
> You can then drag and drop and perform operations as you would any normal 
> windows folder, the DAV portion over https is transparent to windows. And 
> I suspect the protocol os probably very much more efficient than SMB over 
> a wan. Clients for non windows users are also available (e.g. cadaver 
> command line Unix dav client)

https would add additional Overhead though. It's not mentioned, does
cavader actually mounts that as a shared drive/folder?

> A quick google gives me some links that will help explain further.
> 
> This shows some sample setup for windows :
> 
> http://www.its.pomona.edu/about_its/help/help_sheets/HTML/winxpwebdav.htm
> 
> This is the webdav community site :
> 
> http://www.webdav.org/
> 
> Installation instructions for mod_dav
> 
> http://www.webdav.org/mod_dav/install.html
> 
> 
> Hope that this helps.. email me offline if you want more help on it :)

This is certainly interesting. The FAQ states that it even supports file locking 
for concurrency support and most beneficial to _high_latency_ environments.

That is way cool in my books.

Thanks for the links. I'll read more on it during the weekends and explore further.