The webdav command opens a VMFS volume, and serves the contents of the file system as WebDAV/HTTP. The volume can be directly mounted in most operating systems.
The WebDAV server binds on localhost (127.0.0.1) and port 50080 by default. This can be changed by optionally specifying the host IP and port to bind to.
Starting the WebDAV server
The following command starts a WebDAV server for the VMFS volume on /dev/sda5:
>java -jar fvmfs.jar /dev/sda5 webdav
VMFSTools (C) by fluid Operations (v0.9.8.13 r66 / 2009-03-05_22-18-06)
http://www.fluidops.com
*** Serving WebDAV/HTTP at http://localhost:50080/vmfs
By pointing your Web browser to the URL, you can now browse the VMFS file system.
Mounting the volume on Windows
On Windows, this volume can now be mounted as a drive letter as follows:
> net use * http://localhost:50080/vmfs
Drive Z: is now connected to http://localhost:50080/vmfs.
The command completed successfully.
The VMFS volume is now visible under drive Z. Executing a dir Z:\ shows the root directory. In Windows Vista, this works out of the box.
Alternatively, you can also use the "Map Network Drive" wizard in Explorer.
Note: If you want to use Vista's "Add a Network Location" feature, the drive location needs to be specified as "\\host@port\vmfs", using the HTTP URL is not accepted.
Mounting on Linux
On Linux, the volume can be mounted using the davfs2 driver as follows:
> mount -t davfs -o ro http://localhost:50080/vmfs/ /mount/vmfs
Please enter the username to authenticate with server
http://localhost:50080/vmfs/ or hit enter for none.
Username:
mount.davfs: warning: the server does not support locks
Just press enter when asked for the username (no authentication required). The volume is now accessible under the given mount point (/mount/vmfs in the above example).
Mounting Success List
Successfully mounting volumes seems to depend on whether WebDAV is serving on the default port (80), and whether there is a path prefix (like "/vmfs") or not.
Here's the current "success list" for mounting with different operating systems. More feedback welcome:
- Windows Vista works
- Mac OS X (10.5.6) works
- Linux works (with davfs2)
This was tested on Ubuntu 8.
- 3rd party NetDrive client on Windows mounts fine
- Windows Server 2008 works fine without path prefix
- Windows Server 2003 server works fine with default port
This requires the WebFolders upgrade, see Microsoft KB907306.
- Windows XP mounts with port and with path prefix
Use the "Add Network Place" wizard (this does not show up as drive letter though).
Got it working on XP with Microsoft iSCSI Initiator connected to an ESX vSphere4 VMFS. Mapped to a drive using WebDrive? (http://www.webdrive.com/products/webdrive/index.html). Can use batch scripts to backup entire VM servers now :)
Ran the VMFS server using this (runs on port 50080):
> java -jar fvmfs.jar \\.\PhysicalDrive1? webdav
I managed to start the Webdev server and can browse the file from a browser. But when I tried to use the "net use" or map network drive to mount the volume, it also failed with "The network name cannot be found"
Is there any other setting I need to do before I can mount the volume?
Thanks. Regards, Wilson
I am on OS X and cannot get any of this to work. I don't know what I am doing and after reading this whole site; I still don't.
The disk is connected via a USB-to-SATA adapter. It shoes up as disk2. There are a couple FAT partitions and those mount and appear in Finder. The partition disk2s7 does not mount because it is an unrecognized FS.
I think the main issue is there is no mount point for the drive in OS X because it doesn't recognize the FS. So there is no "\Volumes\disk2s7". I can see the 'unrecognized" drive partition on drive2 and drive 2 is mounted but I cant get info... just says "no such file or directory"
Help... like explicit commands for Terminal/OS X... please... :)
On Windows 7 with its painfully crap filesizelimit - I recommend doing the following
1) Open cmd prompt with administrator privs and run java -jar fvmfs.jar \\.\PhysicalDrive?[0..9] webdav 2) Download GNU wget from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm 3) Modify your path to include where you installed the tool 4) Open a NEW command prompt 5) create a new directory where you wish to store the files 6) cd to that directory 7) Run wget -r http://localhost:50080/vmfs/[Share Name]
Cheers
Mounting on OSX
Is there a limit to the number of WebDAV servers that can be run at the same time?
well, I tried this on a iSCSI volume used by ESX4i. All I see are the .sf files. How do I find and mount the partition that was used for the VM machine files used within ESX? thanks