Apple OS X WebDAV doesn't work right (or "How To Redirect Carefully")

I have a WebDAV server that I store all of my personal documents on, and after upgrading to Tiger awhile back I had problems with folders disappearing in the directory listing, and things just not working quite right.

It turns out that the Apple WebDAVFS (and some other WebDAV client implementations) have problems with the Apache WebDAV. Just a minor incompatibility, but annoying nonetheless. There is a configuration change that needs to be made in the httpd.conf to fix this problem:

BrowserMatch "^WebDAVFS/1.+" redirect-carefully

This should work for all future 1.x versions of WebDAVFS on OS X. I limited it to 1.x assuming that maybe, just maybe, they might fix this "problem" in version 2.0.

It's a simple change, and will make Apache "redirect carefully". For those interested, Apache says: > This forces the server to be more careful when sending a redirect to the client. This is typically used when a client has a known problem handling redirects. This was originally implemented as a result of a problem with Microsoft's WebFolders software which has a problem handling redirects on directory resources via DAV methods.

If course, I would think it should always be "careful" about redirecting, but that's just me. Maybe redirecting carelessly is the best default.