WebDAV File Systems - BioCoRE, NetFiles

WebDAV is a essentially a web-based filesystem, accessed over HTTP or HTTPS and allowing users access to their files from anywhere. It is fairly restricted, but it does work.

The two WebDAV servers of general interest to users in our group are BioCoRE's and CITES' NetFiles service.

Accessing File Systems

Unix Systems

Mounting WebDav Partitions - mount.davfs

To mount a partition so it looks to the filesystem like anything else requires 'mount.davfs'. We have set up several scripts for the Linux machines to make this easier:

  • mount.biocore and unmount.biocore - mounts and unmounts the partitions into /webdav/USERNAME.
  • mount.netfiles and unmount.netfiles - mounts and unmounts the partitions into /netfiles/USERNAME.

These scripts are run with sudo, ie sudo mount.biocore -U tskirvin. mount.biocore -h will offer more details on the scripts.

Further notes on these scripts:

  • mount.davfs doesn't really have a good idea of file ownerships or permissions, but things *should* look like they're owned by the proper people after unmounting and remounting.
  • At present, passwords with 'special' characters will not work properly when mounting the file system. We hope to change this shortly.
  • Mounting and unmounting may offer some extraneous error messages regarding directory names and such. If a 'mount' doesn't work, try running a 'unmount' first and then trying again.

Accessing WebDav Partitions - cadaver

Files can be accessed in an FTP-like manner using cadaver from Linux and Solaris (no SSL support). man cadaver for more details.

Non-Unix Systems

I don't have exact directions for mounting WebDAV partitions from non-Unix platforms; please refer to the BioCoRE WebDav documentation for details.

Links