WebDAV Share

WebDAV is an HTTP based file transfer protocol. It's integrated into Windows, GNOME, KDE and many programs for backups, file sharing and media players.

It's installed as a plugin for a web server. Unfortunately OpenWrt's uhttpd doesn't support it. If you have enough space you can install Lighttpd webserver and configure WebDAV share.

Assuming that USB drive is mounted to /srv/disk/ folder.

mkdir -p /srv/disk/dav/
chown http:www-data /srv/disk/dav/
mkdir -p /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/
mkdir -p /var/lib/lighttpd/
chown http:www-data /var/lib/lighttpd/
echo "var.home_dir = \"/var/lib/lighttpd\"" > /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/1-vars.conf
cat << EOF > /etc/lighttpd/conf.d/99-disk.conf
$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/dav($|/)" {
  server.document-root := "/srv/disk/"
  auth.backend = "plain"
  auth.backend.plain.userfile = "/etc/lighttpd/webdav.shadow"
  auth.require = ("" => ("method" => "basic", "realm" => "webdav", "require" => "valid-user"))
}
EOF
opkg update
opkg install lighttpd-mod-auth lighttpd-mod-authn_file lighttpd-mod-webdav

Now set a password:

echo "youruser:somesecret" > /etc/lighttpd/webdav.shadow

Note: your secret is not encoded and saved on router in clear text for a better performance. If a hacker get access to the file it can see your password. So don't put here a password that you are using anywhere else. Just generate a new one for example with the command:

< /dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c${1:-32};echo;

And finally restart Lighttpd:

/etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

Open in a browser http://192.168.1.1/dav/ and you'll be prompted for credentials. After login you'll see a directory listing but this not yet a WebDAV, just an additional feature.

To connect to WebDAV see Accessing WebDAV Server.

To test WebDAV from command line use cadaver:

    cadaver http://192.168.1.1/dav/
    Authentication required for webdav on server `192.168.1.1':
    Username: youruser
    Password: 
    dav:/dav/> ls
    Listing collection `/dav/': succeeded.
            README.txt
    dav:/dav/> cat README.txt 
    Displaying `/dav/README.txt':
    It works!
    dav:/dav/> exit
    Connection to `192.168.1.1' closed.

If you don't want to install the cadaver you can test with a curl (replace the youruser):

curl -u youruser -X PROPFIND -H "Depth: 1" 'http://192.168.1.1/dav/'

To watch the share from a browser you can install the small and nice UI https://github.com/dom111/webdav-js

WebDAV Share

WebDAV with Lighttpd

Test it

UI for the WebDAV share

Links and docs