minimal Apache HTTPD WebDAV configuration

I recently decided to see what the minimal configuration Apache HTTPD needed to allow MacOSX to attach using webdav, as in the minimal configuration to make a HTTP based file server with Apache HTTPD.

The environment:

• MacOSX client and server
• The Apache HTTPD modules installed at /usr/libexec/apache2/
• A working directory at /Users/happy/2010-03-23-dav
• A data directory at /Users/happy/2010-03-23-dav/data
• Apache HTTPD version Apache/2.2.13

The minimal configuration ended up being:

# start with "apachectl -f /Users/happy/2010-03-23-dav/httpd.conf -k start"

ServerRoot "/Users/happy/2010-03-23-dav"
Listen 8090

LoadModule dav_module /usr/libexec/apache2/mod_dav.so
LoadModule dav_fs_module /usr/libexec/apache2/mod_dav_fs.so

DAVLockDB logs/DAVLock
<Directory "/Users/happy/2010-03-23-dav/data">
DAV On
</Directory>

DocumentRoot "data"

PidFile logs/httpd.pid
LockFile logs/accept.lock 

This configuration does no authentication or access control, and runs the server as the user that launched it (I launched it as a regular user).

After also doing the same on a Linux machine, the only change was path names, I found that it is the network link rather than the protocol that is limiting my file transfer speed between the two computers.