WebDAV on CentOS - getting 403 error when attempt to upload

Question

I configured Apache2 to allow WebDav on a directory (CentOS 5 / Plesk 8.6):

• WebDav is enabled in httpd.conf
• /var/lib/dav/lockdb is writeable by Apache
• My target dir is chmod 777
• My target dir is chowned apache:psacln
• using Basic Authentication (setup by Plesk interface)

in my vhost.conf I have:

<Directory /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/target_dir>
        Dav On
    AllowOverride none
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
</Directory>

I can connect to the directory using authentication fine and download files from it. But I cannot write to the dir. I get a 403 Error when I attempt to upload or create a dir.

Anyone have any tips?

Thanks in advance -

Update - 6/5 Using the comments below I've isolated the issue to being some type of conflict with .htpasswd protected directories. I can created an unprotected dir and enable WebDAV uploads fine. But once I enable Basic Auth on the directory everything goes south. I can read but no longer upload.

This is my vhost.conf:

<Directory /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/subdomains/subdomain/httpdocs/>
        AuthUserFile /var/www/.htpasswd
        AuthName "Login"
        AuthType Basic
        Require valid-user

        DAV on
    AllowOverride none
        <Limit PUT POST DELETE PROPFIND PROPPATCH MKCOL COPY MOVE LOCK UNLOCK>
                Require valid-user
        </Limit>
</Directory>

Update 6/6

Was able to get WebDAV working on a different domain with minimal effort. The only difference between the two domains is that in the one which refuses to allow write access I have a DocumentRoot directive:

    DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/app/webroot

Might this be causing some problems?

Answer 1

I recently struggled with the same problem on my Fedora 10 system. In my case the culprit was some odd redirection that I was doing in Apache. Specifically, I use a content management system (Drupal, to be exact) that within it's .htaccess includes the following redirection logic to redirect missing files to a PHP script:

# Rewrite URLs of the form 'x' to the form 'index.php?q=x'.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]

It makes sense that the above only affects the PUT method since in that case REQUEST_FILENAME does not exist.

Not having the WebDAV area inside of the Drupal area, which seems like a reasonable constraint, fixes the problem.

Also, I think it is likely that SELinux would result in a different error, but it's not mentioned in the discussion above. Did you try disabling SELinux?

Answer 2

Same problem. Solved by:

<Location /xyz>
    DAV On
    AuthType Digest
    AuthName "webdav-xmarks"
    AuthDigestProvider file
    AuthUserFile "/home/xy/xba/digest-password"
    Require valid-user
    RewriteEngine off <-- this part solved it!
</Location>

Answer 3

Same problem.

Solved by creating a .htaccess file in the webdav directory with :

RewriteEngine off

Found here: http://annoyingtechnicaldetails.wordpress.com/2007/07/20/webdav-vs-drupal-htaccess-redirect-rules/

Answer 4

What does your error_log say? That's the first place to look.

Also, look in the regular access_log; sometimes some DAV clients will try to do DAV things at higher level directories than where you're doing your work, which requires them to have at least read-only DAV access up to the virtualhost root.

Answer 5

Did you try using limit: (for example)

  <Limit PUT POST DELETE PROPFIND PROPPATCH MKCOL COPY MOVE LOCK UNLOCK>
    Require valid-user
  </Limit>

Answer 6

As Ram Prasad said, you need that Limit statement in the Directory entry in your vhosts.config file.

You also need a .DAV directory that is owned by apache in the same directory as your .htaccess file. I have found this usually causes the 403 error, as Apache uses this folder to write temporary files to.

See also: http://www.webdav.org/mod_dav/install.html