(Newbie) WebDAV/CIFS setup.

[ddupmul]

Hi Alfresco Forum!

I am evaluating CMS/DMS systems for adoption of our company, and so far, Alfresco is definitely a front-runner.  I installed the Windows .exe of Alfresco 1.3 (Tomcat) on my system, but we'll probably install on a Linux RH Enterprise server, eventually.

I have seen in the product description that Alfresco supports accessing files directly using Windows Explorer via CIFS.

Question 1: Is CIFS access automatically setup so it can be used immediately?  If so, how?  I don't see anything in the tutorial that even mentions CIFS.

Question 2: s/CIFS/WebDAV/g  (replace CIFS with WebDAV in the question 1)

(I'm posting both of these questions in a single post, since they seem very much related)

Thanks for your help!

David

[kevinr]

Yes both CIFS and WebDAV (and FTP!) are available in the default installation.

These are the default locations for accessing the interfaces, replace the <server> with your server machine name…

The CIFS server will be called this:
\\<server>_a\Alfresco
So in windows, Start->Run and enter the above string to see the CIFS interface (you can then Map a Drive to that location if you wish). You can use any appropriate Alfresco user login (e.g. admin/admin)

The WebDAV server is access here from a browser or WebDAV compatible application:
http://<server>:8080/alfresco/webdav
Again, any appropriate Alfresco user login will work.

The FTP server is accessed from an FTP client on port 21 using any valid Alfresco user login:
<server>:21 username/password

The powerful Alfresco security and permissions framework is ubiquitous across the various interfaces, so a restricted user can see the same files when using any of the above mechanisms to access the repository.

Hope this helps,

Kevin

[ddupmul]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks!  That's just the information that I was looking for.

FTP and WebDAV seem to work great!  I'll try to create files as different users and hide them from one another.  That sounds especially useful and powerful.

Can't seem to get CIFS working.
I've only installed Alfresco on my local system, so I'm using the hostname "localhost", which both FTP and WebDAV understand.  Is it just possible that Windows networking can't find the \\localhost_a\?  Our production server(s) would be better setup on the Windows Domain.

Thanks again,
David

[marcusm]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks!  That's just the information that I was looking for.

FTP and WebDAV seem to work great!  I'll try to create files as different users and hide them from one another.  That sounds especially useful and powerful.

Can't seem to get CIFS working.
I've only installed Alfresco on my local system, so I'm using the hostname "localhost", which both FTP and WebDAV understand.  Is it just possible that Windows networking can't find the \\localhost_a\?  Our production server(s) would be better setup on the Windows Domain.

Thanks again,
David

Yeah, I had this problem.  What it turned out to be was that I didn't have Microsofts Loopback Adapter running.   Once I got that going, everything was fine.  Hence, as it only takes 30 seconds to set up the loopback interface, I'd try this first.

My understanding is that the Win32NetBios needs an active NIC card to work (it looks for ipconfig or LANA? settings or something).  I'm a bit hazy on this as I'm fairly new to this, so I stand to be corrected.  Anyway, as my laptop is standalone, none of the nic cards were active & didn't have the required settings.

To see if CIFS is up and running, modify the CIFS server section in the  log4j.properties uncommenting the lines

log4j.logger.org.alfresco.smb.protocol=debug
log4j.logger.org.alfresco.smb.protocol.auth=debug
log4j.logger.org.alfresco.acegi=debug

All going well when you restart Tomcat   you should get the message saying CIFS has started up, and also get something along the lines of

"18:31:00,671 DEBUG [smb.protocol.mailslot] HostAnnouncer: Announced host DOGSTAR_A"

being spat out to the console every five seconds or so.


Hope that helps.


One thing I have noticed, is that when I connect to the internet (which I do through a USB port ), if I don't have the loopback interface enabled,  I get the message that the CIFS server has started properly.  However I don't get the  


18:31:00,671 DEBUG [smb.protocol.mailslot] HostAnnouncer: Announced host DOGSTAR_A"

statement, and cifs does not work, so beware.

[ddupmul]

Hi Marcus,

Thanks for your reply.

Did you have this problem on a "real" server too?  I've only installed Alfresco onto an XP SP2 desktop system.

I already have an active NIC card for Win32NetBios to see during startup.  I have a built-in Intel Pro/100 NIC card with an up-to-date driver.

Once you got it to work, how did you specify the host?  Did you use "localhost", or ??  (I presume that you were installing Alfresco onto your laptop.)

Thanks again,

David

[marcusm]

I haven't tried installing Alfresco in a proper network environment,  like you I'm evaluating it on a standalone Windows XP / Postgres / Java 1.6 rc environemnt. 

Once I got it to work I don't think I had to change anything.  I say I don't think I had to change anything, as I did plenty of foo fooing around trying to get things to work.  Once I got things working I propgressivly reversed all my changes, so I thing my system is now the same as when I started off.

A friend of mine has the same problem as you, so if he gets it going I'll let you know.

Incidently, have you tried mapping to your alfresco machine from a remote machine?

[ddupmul]

Hi Marcus,

Thanks for your reply.

I think my problem is that I forgot to do any foo fooing!  :wink:

CIFS is turning out to be less important to management than other items such as PDF conversion and a few other features, so I'll be looking into those features first before trying to get CIFS to work.

David

[carry2web]

You must be kidding?
CIFS is one of THE most easy ways to hook up an advanced repository into known everydays ways of working to the ordinary, err managers.
They just copy/paste or save their files on an Alfresco CIFS mapped drive and you have their attention when showing how it appears in the web client like magic.
More on CIFS and loopback here
http://forums.alfresco.com/viewtopic.php?t=5376&sid=5fe2ad1df3aaa73f106dccdc8469e9df