Robert McMurray's Blog [MSFT] : WebDAV

IIS Videos on Dr. Dobb's Web Site

robert_mcmurray — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 06:43:00 GMT

Like many people I know, I get a lot of email from various industry-related publications; some of the emails are spam, and the others are from computer magazines that I subscribe to. (And there are several of those. ;-] )

Anyway, I received an email the other day from the folks at Dr. Dobb’s, and it contained a link for a video on IIS Bitrate Throttling. It always piques my interest to see what others have to say about IIS, so I followed the link and discovered that the following page has several IIS-related videos listed:

http://www.ddj.com/ddjtvmsondemand.jhtml

Within the list of videos I found videos for FTP and WebDAV, so I couldn't resist watching those:

IIS FTP Publishing Service
http://ddj.com/ddjtvmsondemand.jhtml?bcpid=10177845001&bclid=9347349001&bctid=40439588001
IIS WebDAV
http://ddj.com/ddjtvmsondemand.jhtml?bcpid=10177845001&bclid=9347349001&bctid=40444327001

As I was watching those videos, the thought occurred to me that those videos were really familiar - but not in a déjà vu kind of way. As it turns out, those are the same videos that are on the IIS.NET web site:

IIS FTP Publishing Service
http://www.iis.net/expand/ftp
IIS WebDAV
http://www.iis.net/expand/WebDAV

Oh well - I was hoping for something new. But the fact remains that the folks at Dr. Dobb’s have collected a good number of IIS and Windows-related videos and put them all in one place, so it's a nice reference to have around.

Using Apple's WebDavFS for Mac OS X with WebDAV on IIS 7

robert_mcmurray — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:19:00 GMT

Today's blog post needs to have a disclaimer right up front - I freely admit I'm not a Mac OS X expert, so I may not have everything 100% correct in this post. But I've seen a lot of questions on forums.iis.net that discuss using IIS WebDAV with Mac OS X, so I thought that I'd share a few of the things that I've noticed. Just the same, if I were writing a formal walkthrough I would have said something like, "Microsoft is not responsible for the behavior of Apple's Mac family of products. The information that is provided in this topic is provided to assist Mac OS X users that are connecting to IIS using WebDAV."

All that being said, here are the prerequisites for getting your environment together:

Your server needs to be running Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, or Windows 7.
Your server needs to have Internet Information Services 7 and the WebDAV module installed. (Note: See the Installing and Configuring WebDAV on IIS 7.0 topic for more information.)
For best results, your Mac client needs to be running OS X version 10.4 or later.

Connecting to a WebDAV server using Mac OS X

In Mac OS X, open Finder.
Choose Go, then Connect To Server.
Enter the URL of the WebDAV server in Server Address. For example:
http://www.example.com/path/
Click Connect.

For more information, please see the following help topics that are available on Apple's Web site:

Troubleshooting WebDAV connections using Mac OS X

These are some of the issues that I've seen:

WebDavFS connections are read-only if WebDAV LOCKs are disabled on the server. Because of this:
- If you are using WebDAV 7.0 on IIS 7 you will not be able write files to the server; this is because WebDAV locks were not available in this release.
- If you are using WebDAV 7.5 on IIS 7 you will need to enable locks before you can write files to the server; this is because WebDAV locks are disabled by default. (Note: See the How to Use WebDAV Locks topic for more information.)
WebDavFS connections attempt to create files that may be blocked by IIS:
- "Desktop Services Store" (.DS_Store) files. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.DS_Store for a description.)
- "Resource Fork" (e.g. "._filename.ext") files. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork for a description.)
Allowing unknown MIME types for WebDAV requests should allow these file types, and that setting is located under Web Settings action for the WebDAV Authoring Rules feature of IIS Manager.

For more information, see the following topics that are available on Apple's Web site:
- Mac OS X 10.4: How to prevent .DS_Store file creation over network connections
- Mac OS X 10.4: Windows Server 2003 IIS Web Server fails GET call on .DS_Store and ._ files

In Closing...

I have to reiterate that I'm not a Mac OS X expert, so this list is probably not all-inclusive, but it's helped to resolve some of the issues that I've seen.

FTP 7.5 and WebDAV 7.5 have been released!

robert_mcmurray — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:29:00 GMT

Over the next few days you're going to hear a lot of details about many of the great new IIS extensions that the IIS feature team is releasing for the 2009 MIX Conference in Las Vegas later today. I don't want to spoil any surprises by talking about anyone else’s feature areas, but I’m about to board a plane to head out on vacation (to Peru!) and I'm not taking a computer with me (believe it or not!) so I thought that I’d take a moment to highlight just a few of the features that are in the FTP 7.5 and WebDAV 7.5 releases.

FTP 7.5

One of the great new features in FTP 7.5 is extensibility. We had some extensibility features that were partially implemented in FTP 7.0, and we used those for the ASP.NET and IIS Manager authentication providers, but FTP extensibility was not officially supported in the 7.0 release. With FTP 7.5 extensibility is fully supported, so you can now write providers that implement custom functionality for authentication/authorization, home directory lookups, and logging.

To help developers get started writing providers for FTP 7.5, I wrote the following walkthroughs that are available on Microsoft's learn.iis.net web site:

Another highlight in FTP 7.5 is the addition of a user interface for the FTP Request Filtering features. We shipped request filtering with FTP 7.0 while the request filtering user interface was still in development, and the 7.5 version seemed like a great time to release it.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with FTP request filtering, it allows you to add rules that allow or deny specific file extensions, hidden segments, URL sequences, and even FTP commands.

For more information about the features in the new FTP service, see the following page on the http://www.iis.net/ web site:

http://www.iis.net/extensions/FTP

WebDAV 7.5

One of the big changes in WebDAV 7.5 is the inclusion of WebDAV locks, which are implemented through a simple locking mechanism. Our lock implementation was still in development when we shipped the WebDAV 7.0 release, and this release should help publishing scenarios where WebDAV locks are required.

To help you get started using locks with WebDAV 7.5, I wrote the following walkthrough that is available on Microsoft's learn.iis.net web site:

How to Use WebDAV Locks

For more information about the features in the new WebDAV module, see the following page on the http://www.iis.net/ web site:

http://www.iis.net/extensions/WebDAV

In Closing...

So that about wraps it up for some of the major highlights for FTP and WebDAV; for news about everything else that's coming out for IIS, watch the news items on the http://www.iis.net/ home page!

Life after FPSE (Part 4)

robert_mcmurray — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:14:00 GMT

In continuation from my previous blog posts on on the subject of migrating from FPSE to WebDAV, today's blog post will address a combination of issues that I've run into and some implementation ideas.

Listing content in virtual directories

One different that I ran into rather quickly after I migrated a couple of web sites from FPSE to WebDAV was that suddenly my virtual directories were visible in my web authoring tool, which is Microsoft Expression Web. By default, virtual directories didn't show up when using FPSE - you had to explicitly "install" FPSE on individual virtual directories in order to use them from FrontPage or Visual Studio over the FPSE protocol.

For one web site this was somewhat alarming, because I had a web site with only 200 web pages and a virtual directory with thousands of files in it, and I routinely create VBA macros to automate large-scale authoring actions. This meant that any use of the ActiveWeb.AllFiles collection would take a large amount of time to process.

There isn't any easy way to hide virtual directories from WebDAV, because they're not necessarily hidden from any HTTP requests. If your web sites use virtual directories, WebDAV simply makes them available. You can't use IIS 7 Request Filtering's "hidden segments" or "deny sequences" to hide these paths, although you can use those to prevent access.

The only way that you can more or less "hide" your virtual directories would be to set the authoring rules to allow access to no one. Here's how this might work: you create a web site where you enable WebDAV at the root and add an authoring rule for yourself. Once that is completed, you would click on your virtual directory in the tree view and bring up the WebDAV authoring rules for that path. You would first remove the authoring rule for yourself, then add a new rule that denies all users any access to the virtual directory path.

What the above steps actually do is to instruct the WebDAV module to deny everyone access, so all PROPFIND requests for that path will result in an HTTP 403 response, therefore most WebDAV clients will not display the path. In my particular case I implemented these steps and my web site authoring is back to the way that I expected things to be.

Setting up two sites

Another idea that I've implemented on a few web sites lately is to use two web sites that point to the same content:

The first web site (e.g. www.example.com) is used for normal HTTP web browsing
The second web site (e.g. authoring.example.com) is used for for WebDAV authoring

This configuration yields a number of great benefits, but it's not always possible. For example - if someone else is hosting your web content, they might not want to give you a second web site, or they might charge you for two web sites.

Just the same, here's my short list of some reasons why using a second web site for your WebDAV authoring might be a good idea to look into:

Each web site can have separate security settings (anonymous versus authenticated).
Log file data will be kept separate for browsing versus authoring activity.
Each web site can have a separate apppool, and the authoring apppool can be configured to ignore delegated configuration; this configuration helps alleviate problems from uploading invalid Web.config files that might otherwise prevent HTTP access to your web site.
Each web site can have separate request filtering rules - this alleviates having to configure the "applyToWebDAV" attribute on your request filtering settings.
You can have separate SSL requirements for each site - your "www" site can be HTTP-only and your authoring site can be HTTPS-only.
Virtual directories on the "www" site would not automatically be added to the authoring site, so you can "hide" content from your authoring activities. For example, if you have a set of library scripts that your web site uses that you want to prevent authors from trying to update, you can deploy them through a virtual directory on the "www" site and it will remain hidden from the authoring web site until it's explicitly added.

That's just a few of the benefits that I've been seeing from deploying WebDAV in a two-site configuration - I'm sure that there are a great deal more reasons why this might be a great idea if you can afford to deploy a site this way.

That's all for today - I hope this gives you some more ideas to think about.

Life after FPSE (Part 3)

robert_mcmurray — Fri, 02 May 2008 03:09:51 GMT

In continuation from my blog posts on April 17th and April 23rd, today's blog post will continue to examine moving from the FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE) to WebDAV, and today I'm going to address a combination of issues that I've run into and questions that I've received from customers.

WebDAV Authoring Rules versus FPSE Roles

FPSE had a variety of built-in roles defined that have no replacement in a WebDAV world, but in all actuality most of those roles have no meaning in a WebDAV world. FPSE Roles were built around a set of User Rights, with several predefined roles like Administrator, Author, Contributor, and Browser. Each of these predefined roles contained various User Rights, and you could create your own roles from scratch by grouping together sets of User Rights. The following screen shot shows the full list of User Rights that were available:

Right up front you should be able to see a reason why there is no WebDAV replacement for many of these - they are mostly specific to FPSE-related behavior, such as adding themes or borders to a web, etc. Roles were generally written to file system ACLS through the use of specialized groups named "OWS_nnnnn_xxxxx" for whichever role was in use:

That being said, FPSE did a great number of things that annoyed many web administrators - namely:

If you manually changed your permissions to a set of customized permissions, FPSE would eventually rewrite your permissions the way that it thought they should be.
If you decided that having NETWORK and INTERACTIVE in the ACLs for every web site on your server was a bad thing, FPSE didn't seem to care and kept adding those permissions to every FPSE-enabled web site.

There are many other things that FPSE did that made people upset, but mainly I heard a great deal of complaints about those two behaviors.

Here's the great thing about moving to WebDAV - whatever permissions you set on your files will stay on your files. WebDAV does not come along later and reset anything, so now you're really in charge of your own ACLs. What's more, you can combine your WebDAV authoring rules with your file system ACLs to give you the flexibility and power that you have when combining file shares and file permissions. The following screen shot shows a small handful of WebDAV authoring permissions configured for two groups of users:

Since I manage several servers, I like having more control over what's really going on with my permissions. (When it comes to servers, I'm something of a control freak. <grin>) If you're familiar with AppCmd, you can script the creation of WebDAV authoring rules, making it easy to write scripts that create sites and automatically deploy a set of authoring rules for each site. More information on using AppCmd to script authoring rules is available in the "Working with WebDAV Authoring Rules" section of the following walkthrough:

How to manage WebDAV using APPCMD
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=108319

WebDAV Redirector Weirdness

I mentioned in my last blog that I wrote the following walkthrough that discusses using the WebDAV redirector in depth:

Using the WebDAV Redirector
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=112138

Once again, that walkthrough discusses how to install the redirector, how to map drives to WebDAV sites, and how to troubleshoot some of the problems that you might see when using the WebDAV Redirector. That being said, I have noticed a couple of other things when working with the WebDAV Redirector that I thought needed mentioning.

Weirdness #1: xcopy.exe fails on repeated copy operations

I discovered one day when using xcopy.exe to backup a site from one server to another that xcopy fails when doing repeated copy operations on WebDAV-mapped drives. Here's an example of that that looks like:

C:\>net use * http://www.fabrikam.com
Enter the user name for 'www.fabrikam.com': msbob
Enter the password for www.fabrikam.com: ******
Drive Z: is now connected to http://www.fabrikam.com.

The command completed successfully.

C:\>net use * http://www.contoso.com
Enter the user name for 'www.contoso.com': msbob
Enter the password for www.contoso.com: ******
Drive Y: is now connected to http://www.contoso.com.

The command completed successfully.

C:\>xcopy y:\*.* z:\ /e /r /y
Y:\default.htm
Y:\www.contoso.com.txt
Y:\subdir1\default.htm
Y:\subdir2\default.htm
4 File(s) copied

C:\>xcopy y:\*.* z:\ /e /r /y
Y:\default.htm
Y:\www.contoso.com.txt
File creation error - The directory is not empty.

Unable to create directory - Z:\subdir1
2 File(s) copied

C:\>

Looking at the above example, you can see that the WebDAV Redirector successfully maps drives to both web sites, and the first xcopy.exe operation succeeds by copying all four files from the source web site to the destination web site. However, the second xcopy.exe operation fails when trying to copy files into a subdirectory in the destination web site.

Unfortunately, there's nothing that can be done about this failure right now. I talked about this with the team that makes the WebDAV Redirector and they said that they can't fix this at the moment. That said, they did suggest a workaround of using the robocopy.exe utility instead. Since I was simply trying to backup a site, I was able to successfully use the following syntax to backup the site after xcopy.exe failed:

C:\>robocopy y:\ z:\ /mir

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   ROBOCOPY     ::     Robust File Copy for Windows

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Started : Thu May 01 15:21:35 2008

   Source = y:\
     Dest = z:\

    Files : *.*

  Options : *.* /S /E /COPY:DAT /PURGE /MIR /R:1000000 /W:30

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           2    y:\
100%        Older                     41        default.htm
100%        Older                      0        www.contoso.com.txt
                           1    y:\subdir1\
100%        Older                     41        default.htm
                           1    y:\subdir2\
100%        Older                     41        default.htm

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                Total    Copied   Skipped  Mismatch    FAILED    Extras
     Dirs :         3         0         3         0         0         0
    Files :         4         4         0         0         0         0
    Bytes :       123       123         0         0         0         0
    Times :   0:00:00   0:00:00                       0:00:00   0:00:00

    Speed :                 207 Bytes/sec.
    Speed :               0.011 MegaBytes/min.

    Ended : Thu May 01 15:21:36 2008

C:\>

It's still not an ideal situation in my book - I'd rather just use xcopy.exe, but at the moment it's a workaround that I can live with.

Weirdness #2: WebDAV Redirector Timeouts

I mentioned in the walkthrough listed above that you can see the "System error 67 has occurred" when any one of several possible conditions might exist. One of the things that had me confused when I first ran into these errors was that I would fix the root cause of the problem and yet I would still get the same error when I attempted to map a drive. Unfortunately, this problem used to turn up during the early days of our development cycle when I was presenting the alpha versions of our new WebDAV module, so I used to think it was something that we were doing wrong. ;-)

As it turns out, the WebDAV Redirector keeps a cache of failed server attempts, and if you're fast enough at fixing the problem, the WebDAV Redirector will still prevent you from being to connect until the timeout is reached or you restart the service. You can alter the timeout duration by changing the value of the "ServerNotFoundCacheLifeTimeInSec" registry setting that is detailed in the "WebDAV Redirector Registry Settings" section of the above walkthrough, or you can quickly restart the service like I did in the following example:

C:\>net use * http://www.example.com/
System error 67 has occurred.

The network name cannot be found.

C:\>net stop webclient & net start webclient
The WebClient service is stopping.
The WebClient service was stopped successfully.

The WebClient service is starting.
The WebClient service was started successfully.

C:\>net use * http://www.example.com/
Enter the user name for 'www.example.com': msbob
Enter the password for www.example.com: ******
Drive Z: is now connected to http://www.example.com/.

The command completed successfully.

C:\>

For a while I got in the habit of restarting the service after fixing the cause of the error, but once I adjusted the timeout to a lower value I almost forgot about it until I borrowed someone else's machine to do a WebDAV presentation. <grin>

No more FrontPage "Bots" or "Web Components"

Okay, I have to admit - I'm not sad to see the FrontPage "Bots" go the way of the dinosaur, but I realize that there are several people that would disagree with my sentiments. If you'll recall from my first blog post in this series, FPSE and I go back a long way. When FrontPage and FPSE were first released, the marketing slogan surrounding FrontPage was "Professional Web Site Publishing without Programming":

What are FrontPage "Bots"?

The way that FrontPage and FPSE delivered on that promise was through the use of FrontPage "Bots", which were later renamed as "Web Components". These can be subdivided into two main categories:

Author-time Bots/Components: These were features that were used to automate authoring features and did not require FPSE. These features included functionality such as substitution fields, included pages, automatic table of contents generation, navigation bars, etc.
Run-time Bots/Components: These were features that were designed to run interactively on a server through the use of FPSE. These features included functionality such as form processing, hit counters, threaded discussion groups, etc.

The great thing about bots was - they enabled the average user to create dynamic web sites without any programming skills or knowledge of technologies like CGI, ISAPI, ASP, PHP, etc.

But bots were both a blessing and a curse. Over the past twelve years I have seen an enormous number of FPSE bot failures, which has usually resulted in the ubiquitous phrase, "My FPSE site is broken." If you're curious about how prevalent this situation is, do a quick search on the phrase "FrontPage Save Results Component" - you should see tens of thousands of web pages, each of which having a web form that should be using FPSE but can't because it's "broken".

The End of the Road for FrontPage "Bots"

Microsoft’s currently line of web authoring tools, including Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft Expression Web Designer, do not support Author-time Bots/Components, although these tools may provide alternate web authoring functionality that replaces some of these features. When mainstream support for FrontPage 2003 ends in 2009, existing FrontPage-based Author-time Bots/Components will cease to be supported.

When mainstream support for the FrontPage Server Extensions ends in 2010, support for the FrontPage-based Run-time Bots/Components will likewise end. Much of the functionality provided by the Run-time Bots/Components can be provided through web applications using technologies such as ASP.NET, Classic ASP, PHP, etc.

For information about what kinds of "bot-like" features will be available in the upcoming Microsoft web authoring tools, check out the following team blogs:

Summary

It's time to bring today's blog entry to a close, but I hope that I've provided some information that will help anyone that's migrating from FPSE to WebDAV.

Life after FPSE (Part 2)

robert_mcmurray — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:56:57 GMT

Following up on my last blog post, today's blog post will discuss some of the highlights and pitfalls that I have seen while transitioning from using the FrontPage Server Extensions to publish web sites to WebDAV. It should be noted, of course, that FTP still works everywhere - e.g. Expression Web, FrontPage, Visual Studio, etc. As the Program Manager for both WebDAV and FTP in IIS I can honestly say that I love both technologies, but I'm understandably biased. <grin> That said, I'm quite partial to publishing over HTTP whenever possible, and Windows makes it easy to do because Windows ships with a built-in WebDAV redirector that enables you to map a drive to a web site that is using WebDAV.

To set the mood for today's blog, let's have a little fun at FPSE's expense...

A Few Notes about Migrating FPSE Web Sites to WebDAV and Backwards Compatibility

To start things off, I wrote a detailed walkthrough with instructions regarding how to migrate a site that is using FPSE to WebDAV that is located at the following URL:

Migrating FPSE Sites to WebDAV
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=108347

I wrote that walkthrough from the point-of-view that you might want to preserve the FPSE-related metadata in order to open your web site using a tool like Visual Studio or FrontPage. Neither of these tools have native WebDAV support, so you have to map a drive to a WebDAV-enabled web site in order to use those tools, and the instructions in that walkthrough will lead you through the steps to make the FrontPage-related metadata available to those applications over WebDAV.

The part of that walkthrough that makes backwards compatibility work is where I discuss adding settings for the IIS 7 Request Filtering feature so that FPSE-related metadata files are blocked from normal HTTP requests, but still available to WebDAV. (These metadata settings are all kept in the folders with names like _vti_cnf, _vti_pvt, etc.)

It should be noted, however, that if you are not interested in backwards compatibility, the steps are much simpler. In Step 1 of the walkthrough, you would choose "Full Uninstall" as the removal option, and all of your _vti_nnn folders will be deleted. If you've already removed FPSE from a web site and you chose the "Uninstall" option, you can remove the _vti_nnn folders from your site by saving the following batch file as "_vti_rmv.cmd" in the root folder of you web site and then running it:

dir /ad /b /s _vti_???>_vti_rmv.txt
for /f "delims=;" %%i in (_vti_rmv.txt) do rd /q /s "%%i"
del _vti_rmv.txt

It's worth noting, of course, that this batch file can be pretty disastrous if run in the wrong web site, as FPSE will no longer be able to access any of the metadata that defined your web site. Any content stored in folders like _private, fpdb, _overlay, etc., will all be preserved.

Getting to Know the WebDAV Redirector

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 both ship a first-class director, making it easy to use WebDAV sites across the Internet as though they were local shares. Using the WebDAV director is as intuitive as mapping a drive to any UNC share, you just specify the drive letter and the destination URL:

If you prefer, you can also use the command-line to map a drive to a WebDAV site:

C:\>net use * http://www.example.com/
Enter the user name for 'www.example.com': msbob
Enter the password for www.example.com: ******
Drive Z: is now connected to http://www.example.com/.

The command completed successfully.

C:\>

Rather than repeat myself any more than necessary, I wrote the following walkthrough for anyone that plans on using the WebDAV redirector:

Using the WebDAV Redirector
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=112138

That walkthrough discusses how to install the redirector if necessary, how to map drives to WebDAV sites, and how to troubleshoot any problems that you might see.

Microsoft Expression Web - Using a WebDAV-enabled Editor

One of my favorite publishing features in Expression Web is that it has native WebDAV support built-in, so it doesn't have a dependency on the WebDAV redirector in order to work with a WebDAV-enabled web site. If you're currently using Expression Web to open a web site using FPSE, the change to WebDAV should be fairly seamless. If you're currently using FrontPage, the Expression Web team has put together a whitepaper that describes the differences between FrontPage and Expression Web, which is available from the following link:

Microsoft FrontPage to Expression Web
Transitioning to Microsoft® Expression® Web from Microsoft Office FrontPage® 2003

That being said, when opening a WebDAV web site in Expression Web, you simply enter the HTTP URL the same way that you would if you were opening a site using FPSE:

When you first open a web site using WebDAV, Expression Web will prompt you whether to edit the web site live, or edit locally and publish your changes later:

Once your live web site is opened, the WebDAV editing experience is what you would have expected from using FPSE:

Summary

So in closing, I've presented a few things to consider when working with WebDAV instead of FPSE. Using the WebDAV redirector makes working with WebDAV sites as easy as working with network shares, and using Expression Web is by far the easiest way to edit WebDAV sites.

WebDAV Extension for Windows Server 2008 RTM is released!

robert_mcmurray — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:45:00 GMT

Earlier today the Microsoft released the RTM version of the new Microsoft WebDAV Extension for IIS 7.0 for Windows Server 2008!

Listed below are the links for the download pages for each of the individual installation packages:

32-bit Installation Package:
- WebDAV (x86) Extension Module for IIS 7.0
64-bit Installation Package:
- WebDAV (x64) Extension Module for IIS 7.0

We've loaded this version with many great new features such as:

Integration with IIS 7.0:
- The new WebDAV extension module is fully integrated with the new IIS 7.0 administration interface and configuration store.
Per-site Configuration:
- WebDAV can be enabled and configured at the site-level on IIS 7.0, which differed from IIS 6.0 where WebDAV was enabled at the server-level through a Web Service Extension.
Per-URL Security:
- WebDAV-specific security is implemented through WebDAV authoring rules that are configured on a per-URL basis.

Additional information about new features in the WebDAV extension is available in the "What’s New for Microsoft and WebDAV?" topic on Microsoft's http://learn.iis.net/ web site.

To help you get started using the new WebDAV extension, the following walkthroughs have been published on the http://learn.iis.net/ web site:

Getting Started:
Advanced Administrative Features:

Here are a couple of screenshots of the new WebDAV UI in action:

The following prerequisites are required to install the new WebDAV extension:

You must be using Windows Server 2008.
Internet Information Services 7.0 must be installed.
If you are going to manage the new WebDAV extension using the IIS 7.0 user interface, the administration tool will need to be installed.
You must install the new WebDAV extension as an administrator.
IIS 7.0 supports a new shared configuration environment, which must be disabled on each server in a web farm before installing the new WebDAV extension for each node. Note: Shared configuration can be re-enabled after the WebDAV extension had been installed.

Feedback about the WebDAV extension and requests for information can be posted to the following web forum:

IIS7 Publishing Forum: http://forums.iis.net/1045.aspx

I would be remiss if I did not mention that special thanks go to:

Keith – for building it
Eok, Sriram, Ciprian, Dave – for testing it
Gurpreet, Brian, Carlos, Reagan – for making it look pretty
Wade, Ulad, Nazim – for stretching it

We've had a great time working on this project - thanks again to everyone that provided feedback to us throughout all of our technical previews!

Thanks!

Enabling WebDAV on IIS 6

robert_mcmurray — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:02:00 GMT

I had a great question from someone the other day about enabling WebDAV on IIS 6, so I wrote a simple Windows Script Host (WSH) utility that does the trick. Because I'm a firm believer that writing code for one person will ultimately benefit someone else, I'm making that script the subject of today's blog post. ;-)

Note: The following script makes use of several IIS 6 metabase properties, and you can see the following topics for more information:

To use this script, use the following steps:

Copy the WSH code listed below and paste it into a text editor, such as Windows Notepad:

Option Explicit

' --------------------------------------------------
' Part 1: Enable the WebDAV Web Service Extension.
' --------------------------------------------------

' Retrieve an object for the W3SVC root.
Dim objIIsWebService
Set objIIsWebService = GetObject("IIS://localhost/W3SVC")
' Enable the WebDAV Web Service Extension.
objIIsWebService.EnableWebServiceExtension "WEBDAV"
' Save the changes to the metabase.
objIIsWebService.SetInfo

' --------------------------------------------------
' Part 2: Enable the WebDAV-related attributes for the Default Web Site.
' --------------------------------------------------

' Retrieve an object for the web site root.
Dim objIIsWebSite
Set objIIsWebSite = GetObject("IIS://localhost/W3SVC/1/ROOT")
' Enable the WebDAV-related access flags.
objIIsWebSite.AccessRead = True
objIIsWebSite.AccessSource = True
objIIsWebSite.AccessWrite = True
' Enable the directory browsing - required for file listings.
objIIsWebSite.EnableDirBrowsing = True
' Save the changes to the metabase.
objIIsWebSite.SetInfo

Update the metabase path for your web site to IIS://localhost/W3SVC/nnn/ROOT, where nnn is the identifier for the web site where you want to enable WebDAV. Note: The web site identifier can be found in the IIS Manager using the following steps:
- Open the IIS manager.
- Expand the local computer node.
- Highlight the Web Sites node.
- Notice the site ID in the "Identifier" column.
Save the file as EnableWebDav.vbs to your desktop and close your text editor.

Note: This script is not designed the new WebDAV module for IIS 7. To manage the WebDAV module in IIS 7, see the following topics:

I hope this helps!

WebDAV Redirector Registry Settings

robert_mcmurray — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:42:00 GMT

Following up on the release of the WebDAV module for IIS 7, I've been experimenting with the WebDAV redirector that comes with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. This redirector ships as an updated WebClient service, and if you're using Windows Vista it should already be installed, but on Windows Server 2008 you will need to install the "Desktop Experience" feature. Once installed, you can map drives to WebDAV shares much like mapping to a UNC path:

Through some experimentation, I discovered some WebClient service behaviors that I wanted to explain. For example, if I tried to map a drive to a web site that did not have WebDAV enabled I would get an error as expected. But after I enabled WebDAV, I would continue to get an error until some period of additional time had passed. I assumed that the status was somehow cached, and I was curious as to whether I could control that caching. I eventually discovered that there are several settings that control the behavior of the WebDAV redirector that can be configured in the following registry key :

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters

I found a variety of sources that documented one setting or another but I couldn't find a concise list, so I've collected the following list that contains what I've been able to discover so far:

Value & Description

Type

Values

Default

AcceptOfficeAndTahoeServers

Specifies whether the WebClient service can connect to web sites that are running SharePoint or Office Web Server.

DWORD

0	=	False
1	=	True

BasicAuthLevel

Specifies whether the WebClient service can use basic authentication to talk to a server.

Note: Using basic authentication can cause serious security issues as the username/password are transmitted in clear text, therefore the use of basic authentication over WebDAV is disabled by default unless the connection is using SSL. That being said, this registry key can override the default basic authentication behavior, but it is still strongly discouraged.

DWORD

0	=	Basic authentication is disabled
1	=	Basic authentication is enabled for SSL web sites only
2	=	Basic authentication is enabled for SSL and non-SSL web sites

FileAttributesLimitInBytes

Specifies the maximum size that is allowed by the WebClient service for all properties on a specific collection.

DWORD

Size of attributes in bytes

1,000,000 decimal
(1 MB)

FileSizeLimitInBytes

Specifies the maximum size in bytes that the WebClient service allows for file transfers.

DWORD

File size in bytes

50,000,000 decimal
(50 MB)

InternetServerTimeoutInSec

Specifies the connection timeout for the WebClient service uses when communicating with non-local WebDAV servers.

DWORD

Time in seconds

30 decimal

LocalServerTimeoutInSec

Specifies the connection timeout for the WebClient service uses when communicating with a local WebDAV server.

DWORD

Time in seconds

15 decimal

SendReceiveTimeoutInSec

Specifies the timeout in seconds that WebDAV the WebClient service uses after issuing a request, such as “GET /file.ext” or “PUT /file.ext”.

DWORD

Time in seconds

60 decimal

ServerNotFoundCacheLifeTimeInSec

Specifies the period of time that a server is cached as non-WebDAV by the WebClient service.

Note: The WebClient service maintains a list of non-WebDAV servers that have been contacted. If the server is found in this list, a fail is returned immediately without attempting to contact the server.

DWORD

Time in seconds

60 decimal

SupportLocking

Specifies whether the WebClient service supports locking.

DWORD

0	=	False
1	=	True

Note: After changing any of these settings you will need to restart the WebClient service.

I hope this list helps someone else. ;-]

WebDAV Module for Windows Server 2008 GoLive Beta is released

robert_mcmurray — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 03:55:00 GMT

Earlier today the IIS product team released the GoLive beta version of the new WebDAV extension module for IIS 7. (This version is currently available for Windows Server 2008 only.)

Listed below are the links for the download pages for each of the individual installation packages:

32-bit Installation Package:
- WebDAV Extension Module for IIS 7.0 (x86)
64-bit Installation Package:
- WebDAV Extension Module for IIS 7.0 (x64)

We've loaded this version with many great new features such as:

Integration with IIS 7.0: The new WebDAV extension module is fully integrated with the new IIS 7.0 administration interface and configuration store.
Per-site Configuration: WebDAV can be enabled at the site-level on IIS 7.0, which differed from IIS 6.0 where WebDAV was enabled at the server-level through a Web Service Extension.
Per-URL Security: WebDAV-specific security is implemented through WebDAV authoring rules that are configured on a per-URL basis.

Here are a couple of screenshots of the new WebDAV UI in action:

Additional documentation about installing and using this version of WebDAV can be found at the following URL:

Installing and Configuring WebDAV on IIS 7.0:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=105146

While this release is a beta version and not technically supported, feedback about this release and requests for information can be posted to the following web forum:

IIS7 - Publishing:
http://forums.iis.net/1045.aspx

I would be remiss if I did not mention that special thanks go to:

Keith – for building it
Eok, Sriram, Ciprian – for testing it
Gurpreet, Brian, Reagan – for making it look pretty
Vijay, Will, Taylor – for helping keep everything on track ;-]

Thanks!