1. Introduction

1.1. Copyright and License

This document is Copyright 2001 by Saqib Ali. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is available at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

1.2. What is WebDAV?

WebDAV stands for Web enabled Distributed Authoring and Versioning. It provides a collaborative environment for users to edit/manage files on web-servers. Technically DAV is an extension to the http protocol.

Here is a brief description of the extensions provided by DAV:

Overwrite Protection: Lock and Unlock mechanism to prevent the "lost update problem". DAV protocol support both shared and exclusive locks.

Properties: Metadata (title, subject, creater, etc)

Name-space management: Copy, Rename, Move and Deletion of files

Access Control:Limit access to various resources. Currently DAV assumes access control is already in place, and does not provide strong authentication mechanism.

Versioning:Revision control for the documents. Versioning is not implemented yet.

1.3. What do we need?

The tools needed to achieve this objective are:

• C Compiler e.g. GCC

• Apache Web Server

• LDAP Module for Apache

• WebDAV Module for Apache

• LDAP lib file

• SSL engine

• Mod SSL Libraries

NOTE: All of these packages are free and are available for download on the net.

We will compile all the above mentioned packages to produce binaries for the Web Server. The WebDAV and LDAP module will be compiled statically into Apache. Static compilation results in faster execution times. Apache was chosen, because it is the most versatile web server ever to exist. Market Shares for Top Web Servers shows that Apache has the largest web server market share.

Apache is also being used by:

• RackSpace - WebHosting provider

• CIHost - WebHosting provider

• SlashDot

1.4. Assumptions

This document assumes that you have the following already installed on your system.

1. gzip or gunzip - available from http://www.gnu.org

2. gcc and GNU make - available from http://www.gnu.org

The document also assumes there is a LDAP server installed elsewhere which will be used for the authentication.

1.5. Opinions and Suggestions

If you have any questions about the information available on this document, please contact me on the following email address: [email protected]

If you have comments and/or suggestions, please let me know as well!