Mounting a Webdav File System

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Quite often we will give a researcher access to a web experiment by giving a webdav enabled url, a username and password. This page describes how to use this url. In the remainder of this page we will assume that you were given the url https://exp.socsci.ru.nl/experiment/webdav.php, the username u123456 and the password PASSWORD.

Webbrowser

To use the url in a webbrowser, just open the page and type username and password in the popup dialog. This will give you a limited number of features (create new folder, upload file, ...)

Using Sabre Webdav in your browser.

Linux

In Linux (and other POSIX compliant operating systems) you can connect a local directory (~/experiment in this example) to the Webdav resource:

 sudo apt install davfs2 # make sure to allow non root users (setuid root)
 mkdir ~/experiment
 mount.davfs https://exp.socsci.ru.nl/experiment/webdav.php ~/experiment -o rw

If you accidentally did not allow non-root users access, run:

 sudo dpkg-reconfigure davfs2
 sudo usermod -a -G davfs2 $USER

If you want to mount this resource each time you boot your computer, put the following in /etc/fstab (replacing USER with your username)

 https://exp.socsci.ru.nl/experiment/webdav.php /home/USER/experiment davfs _netdev,noauto,user,uid=USER,gid=USER 0 0

and put the password in /etc/davfs2/secrets using:

 /home/USER/experiment u123456 PASSWORD

Nautilus

Type ctrl-L to open the address bar. Type the address: davs://u123456@exp.socsci.ru.nl/experiment/webdav.php. A popup will appear for the password.

Dolphin

Click the address bar. Type the address: webdavs://u123456@exp.socsci.ru.nl/experiment/webdav.php. A popup will appear for the password.

Cyberduck

If you use Microsoft windows, Cyberduck is probably the best choice for mounting a webdav resource.

Mounting a webdav filesystem in cyberduck

Microsoft Windows

One can use the Microsoft Windows """Map Network Drive""" feature to assign a drive letter. No special Windows program is needed to do this. It is an operating system feature. Note that there are quite a few issues. If you use Microsoft Windows it is usually a better idea to use an external program for accessing a webdav drive.

Mapping a network drive in Microsoft Windows