WebDAV

WebDAV means Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning. It is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers. It was defined in rfc4918 and evolved to a de-facto standard. Files (or folders) stored in the cloud can be accessed via WebDAV. WebDAV access is not available if you are syncing folders between clients only. Many operating systems come with built-in WebDAV support and allow to upload, access and explore files stored in the cloud without the client or any additional software installed.

Understanding WebDAV Security

To access folders via WebDAV it is required to authenticate with login to the cloud. In case of the https://my.powerfolder.com cloud it's the email you've registered / purchased with and the password you have set in the past.

Other users require at least read permission on the folder for access, otherwise the access will be blocked.

On https://my.powerfolder.com all WebDAV traffic will be SSL-encrypted.

WebDAV in Browser

WebDAV in browser is not allowed, please use clients to use the WebDAV.

Using WebDAV on Windows

Windows WebDAV Client

The Windows WebDAV client has known issues to be slow and working unstable. This problem won't get fixed by Microsoft so we advice you to use an alternative WebDAV client like ExpanDrive to mount network drives or CarrotDAV to directly browse in your files.

Via Windows Explorer

  • Open Windows Explorer (e.g. by right-clicking the Start button)
  • Right-click Computer in the left navigation pane.
  • Click on Map network drive.

  • Select a free drive letter under the Drive drop-down.
  • Enter the WebDAV URL of the folder into the Folder field. 


Example URL

WebDAV URL: Complete URL/webdav

E.g, https://my.powerfolder.com/webdav

https://drive.powerfolder.com/webdav

For on premise customers:

https://myserver.comapny.de/webdav

  • Check the Connect using different credentials checkbox ((warning) The Windows credentials can be different then from PowerFolder cloud)
  • Enter your login and password to the cloud.

Via command line

  • Open a Command Prompt window (or start cmd.exe).
  • Use the net use command to mount your folder to a drive letter of your choice. Example:

    net use Z: https://my.powerfolder.com/webdav /user:USERNAME PASSWORD /persistent

    (info) Replace USERNAME and PASSWORD with your login to the cloud.


Troubleshooting WebDAV on Windows

Using WebDAV on Mac OS X

Via menu

  1. Click on Go.
  2. Click on Connect to server...
  3. Enter the WebDAV URL into the Server Address field.
  4. Click on Connect.
  5. Choose Registered User and enter your login and password you are using to login to the cloud.
  6. Click on Connect.


Via command line

Mac OS X version 10.4 (Tiger) and following support WebDAV shares natively as a type of filesystem. The system can mount WebDAV-enabled server directories to the filesystem using the traditional BSD mounting mechanism.

The Finder presents a WebDAV share as an external disk, allowing users to interact with WebDAV just as they would with any other filesystem.

Using WebDAV on Linux

Linux users can mount WebDAV shares using davfs2 or fusedav which mount them as coda or FUSE filesystems. KDE has native WebDAV support as part of kio_http. This enables Konqueror and every other KDE application to interact directly with WebDAV servers. Nautilus also has WebDAV support built in. The cadaver command-line client, which provides an FTP-like command set, is included in many Linux distributions.

Via command line and davfs2

  1. Open a shell
  2. Use the davfs2 command to mount your folder to a drive letter of your choice. Example:

    mount.davfs https://my.powerfolder.com/webdav -o username=USERNAME

    (info) Replace USERNAME and PASSWORD with your login to the cloud.

Overview: