How often do you want to share a directory of files on one (*nix) system, and mount it as a network drive on a Windows host, with minimum hassle? For me, this is a common occurrence. After a couple of adjustments to my
Windows 8 machine, I can do this after installing the
pywebdav module, making for a one-liner that creates a temporary high-throughput network share that can be mounted as a drive in Windows.
The annoying part of this trick is that it takes a couple of registry tweaks, and this may affect other resources shared through WebClient, notably, SharePoint.
The easy part of this is installing the
pyWebDav Python package, and running a one-line command to start a
WebDAV server. Install this (in BSD we type
pkg install py27-PyWebDAV). The
-D option specifies the directory to share, and I like to know what the program is thinking (verbose with
-v option):
davserver -D directory_to_share -n -H server_ip_address_here -v
davserver needs the IP address of the network resource that it will use to listen for connection requests. You can test the server using the loopback address and a webdav client installed on the same machine.
Now for the more annoying part: registry changes, with some commentary. On a Windows machine, navigate to the following subkey in regedit:
HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/WebClient/Parameters
Modify these values:
SupportLocking=0x0 (default=0x1)
REQUIRED for interoperability with pyWebDav.
- davserver's -J
parameter appears buggy / nonfunctional with Windows 8, so we have to
modify the registry.
FileSizeLimitInBytes=0xffffffff (or whatever, default is 50 000 000d)
Optional, but you should change this.
- The default value of this is only 50 megabytes, which is really useless for ISOs or whatnot. I recommend 4.2 gigabytes, which is what this value represents. A bigger value would be preferable. Fix this, Microsoft! We've moved on to use terabyte devices.
BasicAuthLevel=0x2
Optional change, useful if you add basic authentication (which pyWebDav supports)
- 0 - Basic authentication disabled
- 1 - Basic authentication enabled for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) shares only (default)
- 2 or greater - Basic authentication enabled for SSL shares and for non-SSL shares
Now that you've made these changes, you can restart the WebClient service. Launch
cmd with
administrator privileges and type:
net stop WebClient
net start WebClient
Mount the share (note that you'll need to do this in a
cmd shell
WITHOUT administrator privileges for your user to see the drive):
net use * http://server_ip_address:8008/
You can also
map network drives using a more GUI method.
Sweet!
