A workaround solution for WebDAV with XP users

Jun 10, '04 10:39:00AM

Contributed by: alani

There was a great thread on using WebDAV to provide iCal (and other) services without dotMac [robg adds: this hint, maybe?]. But it turns out Windows XP behaves strangely when trying to access the DAV service -- it prefixes usernames with " domain_name\ " . There's a somewhat complex and unreliable fix available, but I think the more obvious if somewhat kludgy fix is to just let XP have its way.

Use htpasswd to create extra instances of your users in the .htpasswd file used to provide access to the DAV directory. As in other hints, use this command to add users to the .htpasswd file:

htpasswd -m username /path/to/.htpasswd
Then run the command again, prefixing the username:
htpasswd -m "domain_name\username" /path/to/.htpasswd
So, if my computer is example.com, my user is bill, and the password file is in /Library/WebServer/Documents/dav/.htpasswd, I'll run these two commands, entering the same password for each:
htpasswd -m bill /Library/WebServer/Documents/dav/.htpasswd
htpasswd -m "example.com\bill" /Library/WebServer/Documents/dav/.htpasswd
Make sure you run this command on the correct file -- you may have more than one .htpasswd on your server, or you may have used another name entirely. The -m uses a better encryption scheme; it's optional. In the second version, I used double quotes because I wasn't sure what the backslash would do; maybe they aren't necessary.

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