Davenport 0.9.10 review

Davenport is a servlet which provides a WebDAV gateway to SMB shared resources

License: LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: eglass1

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Davenport is a servlet which provides a WebDAV gateway to SMB shared resources. Typical usage would be to provide web-based read and write access to Windows shared drives.

WebDAV clients, such as Windows' "Web Folders" can copy files to and from the shares over HTTP. Non-WebDAV-capable web browsers can also access the network, downloading files from shared folders in a seamless fashion.

Users access shared resources using their Windows domain username and password, so no account configuration is typically needed. When run over HTTPS, Davenport provides a secure means of accessing internal shared drives over the internet without requiring a VPN.

Installation

The binary distribution of Davenport is provided preinstalled in a standalone Jetty Servlet container. This is distributed in zip and gzipped tar archives for deployment on a variety of platforms; it is also available as a Linux RPM install (tested on Fedora Core 2, but should be portable to most other distributions).

Zip/Tar Installation

Installation is fairly straightforward:

1. Expand the .zip or .tgz archive (preserving directory structure).
2. Configure the deployment descriptor.

RPM Installation (Linux)

1. Install the RPM:

rpm -Uhvf davenport-x.x.x-1.rpm

2. Configure the deployment descriptor.

By default, Davenport will be installed to "/opt/davenport".

Getting started

Before starting, make sure you have tailored the deployment descriptor to your environment. After configuration is complete, the Davenport container is ready be started. The simplest way to do this is to run "java -jar start.jar" in the Davenport root directory. Likewise, executing "java -jar stop.jar" will stop the container. On the Windows platform, double-clicking the .jar files should launch them as well.

After the container has been started, it should be possible to browse SMB resources using Davenport. To list the shares on an SMB server "smbserver" you would enter into your web browser:

http://davserver:8080/smbserver/

"davserver" is the server on which Davenport is running (by default, the container will run on port 8080).

This will list all shares on the "smbserver" server; by clicking one of the shares, files will be listed, and so forth.

You can drag and drop files to and from the Web Folder, create and delete directories, and perform other file operations. You can open a URL as a Web Folder directly by using the "File -> Open" menu in Internet Explorer, and selecting "Open as Web Folder".