Using WebDAV to connect to your iPad with ease and to Windows 7 instead of SMB

Ned Scott of Team XBMC Wiki deserves the credit for discovering this gem in the Mac App Store.

The gem in question is Media Master Server, which is a simple WebDAV server. You have to get it from the Mac App Store, so you must have at least one system running 10.6.6 or better.

It is an Intel-only application and I got it to work with 10.6.8 and 10.7.4. I tried copying the app to a partition running 10.5.8, but no luck.

I noticed that the iWork apps on my iPad could log into external file servers. They had to be iDisk (dead as of June 30, 2012) or WebDAV (what ?)

I did extensive Google searching on setting a WebDAV server for OS X. 9 out of 10 times, the answer came back, “Prepare to modify configuration files for the Apache Web Server built into OS X. This will not be easy.” So coming across Media Master Server was a Godsend. Bless you, who took the time to write this app.

Why would you want to use WebDAV? Two cases.

First, you want to connect your iPad’s iWork applications with your Mac. Apple’s solution for this is to buy Lion Server for another $19.99 to set up a WebDAV server. You’d still have to have access to the Mac App Store, though, to buy it.

Compared to every other set of instructions I found for setting a WebDAV server, MediaMaster Server is dead simple. Just go to the Mac App Store from Snow Leopard or Lion, search for MediaMaster Server, and install it. It is a FREE app on the Mac, although there is a companion paid iOS app. For our purposes, though, we just need the Mac app portion.

First of all, you have to set it up. To begin with, select the directory you want to share.

As you can see, I set my root directory to my Users/thomasbriant directory (or folder), allowing me full access to all my user files on my iPad.

Next, I went to settings to set up my user name and password and the specific port I wanted to use.

I left the password at the default “ipaduser” and the port at the default of “8000”. I also selected Secure HTTP.

On the iPad side, you’ll have to enter your full IP address, which will look like “https://111.222.3.44:8000” You will, of course, enter your own iP address instead of “111.222.3.44”

You’ll have a line to enter the username, which you can change. You’ll have a line to enter the password, which you have to make up yourself.

The first time you do this, you may get a message about an invalid WebDAV certificate. Just please OK and proceed.

Next, you get a box showing all the directories you can access.

Second, many Lion users have found that the SMB file-sharing protocol, used to share files between Macs and Windows, doesn’t work with Lion. Now I can easily connect from my Wintel 7 PC to my Mac Mini running Lion, but not the other way. Since Wintel 7 won’t accept Apple’s AFP file-sharing protocol, this inability to share files between the two OSs gets frustrating at times.

Now with this WebDAV server and the BitKinex program available for free from CNET’s Downloads page here, you can view files from your Mac on your Wintel’s desktop. BitKinex serves as your WebDAV client.

Here are the instructions from Techiechips.com that I followed to get BitKinex up and running

You will get a message that the SSL certificate has lapsed. You can proceed past this warning.

Yes, I am aware of the SMBup app, which installs the open-source version of SAMBA on 10.7. I felt uneasy about fiddling with Apple’s implementation of SMB/CIFS, so I came up with this WebDAV workaround.

Hopefully Apple will rectify the SMB/CIFS problems in 10.8. If not, well, that’s why I came up with this workaround. Thanks to all those who gave me insight into solving the problems. You’re all gentlemen and ladies, and scholars to boot.

Thomas Briant

Editor and Media Manager, MacValley UG