User manual

32 Chapter 3 Managing Websites
WebDAV and Web Content File and Folder Permissions
Mac OS X Server imposes the following constraints on web content files and folders
(which are located by default in /Library/WebServer/Documents):
• For security reasons, web content files and folders should not be writable by world.
• Web content files and folders are owned by user root and group admin by default, so
they are modifiable by any administrator but not by user or group www.
• To use WebDAV, web content files must be readable and writable by user or group
www, and folders must be readable, writable, and executable by user or group www.
• If you need to modify web content files and folders while you are logged in as an
administrator, those files or folders need to be modifiable by the administrator.
If you want to use WebDAV, you need to enable it in Server Admin and manually
change the web content files’ or folders’ ownership to user and group www. If you are
using WebDAV and you want to make changes to web content files or folders while
logged in as an administrator, you need to change the web content file and folder
permissions to admin, make your edits, and then restore the file and folder permissions
to www.
To add sites to your web server while using WebDAV:
1 Change the group privileges of the folder containing your websites to admin (default
folder location is: /Library/Webserver/Documents).
2 Add your new site folder.
3 Change the group privileges of the folder containing your websites back to www.
Enabling Integrated WebDAV Digest Authentication
You can enable digest authentication for WebDAV realms in the Realms pane of Server
Admin. See “Setting Access for WebDAV-Enabled Sites” on page 31 for more
information.
WebDAV and Web Performance Cache Conflict
If you enable both WebDAV and the web performance cache on one or more virtual
hosts (sites), WebDAV clients may encounter problems if they try to upload multiple
files in the Finder—the upload may fail to complete.
To avoid this problem, disable the web performance cache for virtual hosts with
WebDAV enabled. See “Improving Performance of Static Websites (Performance Cache)”
on page 26 for more information about the performance cache.
LL2350.book Page 32 Friday, August 22, 2003 2:32 PM