WebDAV With Lighttpd On Mandriva 2008.1

[Juergen Harms]

I have enjoyed the clear instructions in "How To Set Up WebDAV With Lighttpd On Mandriva 2008.1" - but got stuck and need help.

Everything runs smoothly and without any error messages until I come to "5 Testing WebDAV" using cadaver:
[harms@pcjuergen ~]# cadaver http://www.example.com/webdav/
Could not access /webdav/ (not WebDAV-enabled?):
405 Method Not Allowed
Connection to `www.example.com' closed.
dav:!> quit

I have tried both on Mandriva 2008.1 (no httpd modules installed so far) and 2009.0 (httpd already installed), same result. I am not at all expert in this domain and would be very thankful for any help on how to clarify / proceed (I am quite knowledgeable on general Linux configuration and installation topics). I have found no reference to this problem in the Mandriva forums. http traffic is not blocked by the Mandriva firwall (shorewall).

One small comment to the HOWTO: it suggests to install the lighttpd packages and the apache-base package as a single action - if you follow this advice, Mandriva starts by installing lightlpd with the warning
warning: group apache does not exist - using root
warning: user apache does not exist - using root

This can be avoided by, in a first step, only installing apache-base; I suggest to correspondingly adapt the HOWTO when the next revision is done

[falko]

Everything runs smoothly and without any error messages until I come to "5 Testing WebDAV" using cadaver:
[harms@pcjuergen ~]# cadaver http://www.example.com/webdav/
Could not access /webdav/ (not WebDAV-enabled?):
405 Method Not Allowed
Connection to `www.example.com' closed.
dav:!> quit

Are there any errors in Apache's error log when this happens?

[Juergen Harms]

Thank you for replying. Here is what I can see:

The last message in the apache error-log (/var/log/httpd/error_log) is the shutdown message issued when the httpd daemon was stopped.
[Wed Jan 14 15:09:31 2009] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down

Launching the lighttpd daemon does not produce any messages in that error log (not even the initialisation entries which I get when running the httpd daemon), there is one message in the lighthttpd errorlog (/var/log/lighttpd/error_log) confirming that that daemon really started.
2009-01-14 15:10:43: (log.c.75) server started

After launching the lighthttpd daemon, I tried "apachectl status" and get "404 - Not Found". A port scan on the server gives "80/tcp open http lighttpd 1.4.19". That looks OK, it seems like the communication between the lighttpd daemon and the application is not correctly working.

While I use the httpd daemon, apache works as it should - I use it for communicating with BackupPC (no modifications done to the configuration files that were installed by the packages).

[falko]

What's in /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf, and what's the output of netstat -tap?

[Juergen Harms]

[root@pcjuergen ~]# netstat -tap
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
tcp 0 0 *:rsync *:* LISTEN 2955/xinetd
tcp 0 0 *:http *:* LISTEN 17187/lighttpd
tcp 0 0 *:x11 *:* LISTEN 2452/X
tcp 0 0 *:ftp *:* LISTEN 3009/proftpd: (acce
tcp 0 0 *:ssh *:* LISTEN 2994/sshd
tcp 0 0 pcjuergen.unige.ch:smtp *:* LISTEN 3186/master
tcp 0 0 pcjuergen.local:37514 212.243.221.231:http ESTABLISHED 17057/firefox
tcp 0 0 *:x11 *:* LISTEN 2452/X
tcp 0 0 *:ssh *:* LISTEN 2994/sshd
tcp 0 0 *:ipp *:* LISTEN 2793/cupsd



--------------- contents of /etc/lighthhpd (some comment lines dropped)

# lighttpd configuration file
#
# use it as a base for lighttpd 1.0.0 and above
#
# $Id: lighttpd.conf,v 1.7 2004/11/03 22:26:05 weigon Exp $

############ Options you really have to take care of ####################

## modules to load
# at least mod_access and mod_accesslog should be loaded
# all other module should only be loaded if really neccesary
# - saves some time
# - saves memory
server.modules = (
# "mod_rewrite",
# "mod_redirect",
"mod_alias",
"mod_access",
# "mod_cml",
# "mod_trigger_b4_dl",
"mod_webdav",
"mod_auth",
# "mod_status",
# "mod_setenv",
# "mod_fastcgi",
# "mod_proxy",
# "mod_simple_vhost",
# "mod_evhost",
# "mod_userdir",
# "mod_cgi",
# "mod_compress",
# "mod_ssi",
# "mod_usertrack",
# "mod_expire",
# "mod_secdownload",
# "mod_rrdtool",
"mod_accesslog" )

## a static document-root, for virtual-hosting take look at the
## server.virtual-* options
server.document-root = "/var/www/html"

## where to send error-messages to
server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log"

# files to check for if .../ is requested
index-file.names = ( "index.php", "index.html",
"index.htm", "default.htm" )

## set the event-handler (read the performance section in the manual)
# server.event-handler = "freebsd-kqueue" # needed on OS X

# mimetype mapping
mimetype.assign = (
".pdf" => "application/pdf",
".sig" => "application/pgp-signature",
".spl" => "application/futuresplash",
".class" => "application/octet-stream",
".ps" => "application/postscript",
".torrent" => "application/x-bittorrent",
".dvi" => "application/x-dvi",
".gz" => "application/x-gzip",
".pac" => "application/x-ns-proxy-autoconfig",
".swf" => "application/x-shockwave-flash",
".tar.gz" => "application/x-tgz",
".tgz" => "application/x-tgz",
".tar" => "application/x-tar",
".zip" => "application/zip",
".mp3" => "audio/mpeg",
".m3u" => "audio/x-mpegurl",
".wma" => "audio/x-ms-wma",
".wax" => "audio/x-ms-wax",
".ogg" => "application/ogg",
".wav" => "audio/x-wav",
".gif" => "image/gif",
".jar" => "application/x-java-archive",
".jpg" => "image/jpeg",
".jpeg" => "image/jpeg",
".png" => "image/png",
".xbm" => "image/x-xbitmap",
".xpm" => "image/x-xpixmap",
".xwd" => "image/x-xwindowdump",
".css" => "text/css",
".html" => "text/html",
".htm" => "text/html",
".js" => "text/javascript",
".asc" => "text/plain",
".c" => "text/plain",
".cpp" => "text/plain",
".log" => "text/plain",
".conf" => "text/plain",
".text" => "text/plain",
".txt" => "text/plain",
".dtd" => "text/xml",
".xml" => "text/xml",
".mpeg" => "video/mpeg",
".mpg" => "video/mpeg",
".mov" => "video/quicktime",
".qt" => "video/quicktime",
".avi" => "video/x-msvideo",
".asf" => "video/x-ms-asf",
".asx" => "video/x-ms-asf",
".wmv" => "video/x-ms-wmv",
".bz2" => "application/x-bzip",
".tbz" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar",
".tar.bz2" => "application/x-bzip-compressed-tar",
# default mime type
"" => "application/octet-stream",
)

# Use the "Content-Type" extended attribute to obtain mime type if possible
#mimetype.use-xattr = "enable"


## send a different Server: header
## be nice and keep it at lighttpd
# server.tag = "lighttpd"

#### accesslog module
accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/access.log"

## deny access the file-extensions
#
# ~ is for backupfiles from vi, emacs, joe, ...
# .inc is often used for code includes which should in general not be part
# of the document-root
url.access-deny = ( "~", ".inc" )

$HTTP["url"] =~ "\.pdf$" {
server.range-requests = "disable"
}

##
# which extensions should not be handle via static-file transfer
#
# .php, .pl, .fcgi are most often handled by mod_fastcgi or mod_cgi
static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" )

######### Options that are good to be but not neccesary to be changed #######



### --- snip comment lines



### only root can use these options
#
# chroot() to directory (default: no chroot() )
#server.chroot = "/"

## change uid to <uid> (default: don't care)
server.username = "apache"

## change uid to <uid> (default: don't care)
server.groupname = "apache"



### --- snip comment lines



$HTTP["host"] == "www.example.com" {
server.document-root = "/var/www/web1/web"
alias.url = ( "/webdav" => "/var/www/web1/web" )
$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/webdav($|/)" {
dir-listing.activate = "enable"
webdav.activate = "enable"
webdav.is-readonly = "disable"
auth.backend = "htpasswd"
auth.backend.htpasswd.userfile = "/var/www/web1/passwd.dav"
auth.require = ( "" => ( "method" => "basic",
"realm" => "webdav",
"require" => "valid-user" ) )
}
}

[Juergen Harms]

Looks like I made a mistake in textually copying the host address as www.example.com -
will check that tomorrow

Cheers

[falko]

Looks like I made a mistake in textually copying the host address as www.example.com -
will check that tomorrow

Yes, that's most likely the problem.