Andreas Mausch

WebDAV: Three ways to run a simple test server

I needed a simple WebDAV file server for testing and want to share what I found.

1. Variants

1.1. rclone 

docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 -v ./data:/data -e RCLONE_USER=username -e RCLONE_PASS=password rclone/rclone:1.71.2 serve webdav /data --addr :8080 --baseurl '/webdav'

1.2. bytemark

Caution: This image is 7 years old.

docker run --rm -v ./data:/var/lib/dav -e AUTH_TYPE=Digest -e USERNAME=username -e PASSWORD=password --publish 8080:80 -d bytemark/webdav:2.4

1.3. Caddy

An example in Caddy, which requires some more configuration, but might give you some more flexibility in exchange.

1.3.1. Build docker image 

FROM caddy:2.10.2-builder AS builder

RUN xcaddy build --with github.com/mholt/caddy-webdav@7a5c90d

FROM busybox:1.37.0

COPY --from=builder /usr/bin/caddy /usr/bin/caddy

RUN mkdir /data

ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/bin/caddy", "run", "--config=/etc/Caddyfile"]
docker build -t caddy-webdav .

1.3.2. Run WebDAV server 

{
	admin off
	order webdav before file_server
}

http://localhost

basicauth /webdav/* bcrypt {
  # Password is 'password'
	username $2y$10$3ZFVo6i8sdDXRGHC1c7LuuaprKz/L9jCMvjr9UszLgZGlTxAOmqPK
}

webdav /webdav/* {
	root /data
	prefix /webdav
}
docker run --rm -p 8080:80 -v ./Caddyfile:/etc/Caddyfile:ro -v ./data:/data caddy-webdav

1.3.3. Generate bcrypt password hash 

docker run -it --rm --network=none --entrypoint=htpasswd sineverba/htpasswd:1.5.0 -nBC 10 username

2. Connect to WebDAV via cadaver 

cadaver http://localhost:8080/webdav

Run commands like ls, put file.txt and so on to test functionality.

3. Security

Please note this is just an example. In the real world, you should never use BasicAuth over plain HTTP. BasicAuth is only secure over an encrypted connection like HTTPS.

4. Suggestion

I suggest to use the rclone variant if you just want to quickly spin up a WebDAV server. rclone itself is well maintained, and the docker run command doesn't require any further configuration files.

If you want to go into more details, or have a running infrastructure already, Caddy might be worth a look.