Posted by Scott Laird Fri, 05 Aug 2005 21:42:57 GMT
I missed this when it first came out, but Why has a pointer to a WebDAV server plugin for Webrick, Ruby’s native web server. I wonder how easy this would be to port out of Webrick and into a generic FCGI controller, so we could use it with Rails? That would let Rails act as a file server, which would be useful for some sorts of user interaction. I wonder if we could make use of it in Typo?
Posted by Scott Laird Wed, 03 Aug 2005 00:06:19 GMT
I store all of my iCal calendars on my home web server in a Subversion repository. This worked flawlessly from when I last wrote about it until about two weeks ago when I changed the password that Apache uses for Subversion authentication. When that happened, iCal was unable to connect automatically to the server. Once I entered my new password, it worked until I restarted iCal, but then I had to enter my new password again. It was acting like it still had the old password saved and was using the old one instead of the new one. I ignored this for a few days, but then it really started irritating me.
The solution was pretty simple: open up the Keychain tool and delete everything that even vaguely looks like it could be used for authenticating against the web server in question. I ended up deleting almost a dozen entries, presumably dating back to when I first started using iCal years ago. It took me three or four tries to find them all, but once they were all gone I was able to connect to everything.
This brings up a bug in Keychain Access.app, though–it’s really lousy at deleting things. In many cases, deleting items seems to delete them from the keychain database but still leaves it visible in searches in the keychain tool. I had to stop and restart Keychain Access repeatedly to make sure that everything was gone.
Posted by Scott Laird Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:42:21 GMT
Somewhere in the middle of my MPx200 adventure, something ate all of my repeating annual calendar entries, including birthdays and anniversaries. Personally, I blame PocketMac, but it’s really my fault for not keeping a good backup of my calendar.
That’s not to say that I don’t have a backup–I sync iCal with my home web server every few minutes–but there’s no way to track changes or dig up old versions of my calendar. Once entries are deleted, they’re gone for good. What I really want is revision control for my calendar.
And now I have it. Through a feat of astounding geekiness, I’ve finished installing the subversion version control system on my home web server, and my calendar WebDAV share is actually a subversion repository. What that means is that every time iCal exports a new calendar to my home server, it’s transparently checked into subversion in the background. I can get subversion to give me a list of all of the changes that have been made over time, generate diffs between specific versions, and even revert to older versions.
It’s actually pretty easy. Just install Apache 2, and then install Subversion with the ‘mod_dav_svn’ Apache module. Configure up a virtual server and then add these lines to your virtual host config files:
<Location /xxx>
Dav svn
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Auth Required"
AuthUserFile /etc/apache/htpasswd
Require valid-user
SVNPath /path/to/svn/repository
SVNAutoversioning on
AuthzSVNAccessFile /etc/apache2/svn_authz
</Location>
Now create /path/to/svn/repository with svnadmin, reload apache, and you should have a nice, revision-controlled web-based file server. Most modern desktop OSes can mount WebDAV-enabled web servers just like a more-traditional file server. Both OS X and XP can do it natively, and there should be at least a dozen ways to accomplish it in Linux. This is almost certainly the easiest (cheap) way to get reliable version-controlled storage.
Thanks to Sterling Hughes and Justin Erenkrantz for providing inspiration and documentation.
