Using Radcale with SeedVault backup on Android (LineageOS)

[hills]

SeedVault is the default backup on LineageOS 22.1, and supports WebDAV mount via DAVx5. However I get the error, below.

I'm using owner_only rights which is successful for sync'ing my calendar and address book. Authentication via nginx htpasswd.

I verified I can run a MKCOL from the command line as per the examples. I'm new to DAV, this is prompted only by the need to talk to my Android device and so I'm unclear what is different about what SeedVault is doing. I tried manually creating a .SeedVaultAndroidBackup directory but with no difference.

Would appreciate some insight, thanks.

[INFO] Successful login: 'mark' (http_x_remote_user)
[WARNING] MKCOL request '/mark/.SeedVaultAndroidBackup/' (type:UNKNOWN): rejected because of missing rights 'W'
[INFO] Access to '/mark/.SeedVaultAndroidBackup/' denied for 'mark'
[INFO] MKCOL response status for '/mark/.SeedVaultAndroidBackup/' in 0.003 seconds: 403 Forbidden

[pbiering]

Radicale is a CalDAV and CardDAV server and not a WebDAV storage - no clue whether this finally would work at all - at least it is not tested, good luck.

The error message above is caused by improper configuration in 'rights' file, looks like it need pattern extension - one can enable related debugging to find out why not matching.

[hills]

Thanks, but I'm using owner_only which I understood to mean the rights file does not apply?

Forgive me for not being familiar with how all these protocols relate. It was my understanding that CalDAV and CardDAV were extensions of WebDAV, which is why I assumed Radicale would work with this -- but also it's a bit perplexing as a newcomer.

[pbiering]

owner_only looks like blocking your request by radicale/app/mkcol.py

        if not props.get("tag") and "W" not in permissions:
            logger.warning("MKCOL request %r (type:%s): %s", path, collection_type, "rejected because of missing rights 'W'")
            return httputils.NOT_ALLOWED

and permissions W are not set by radicale/rights/owner_only.py as condition not met:

        if "/" not in sane_path:
            return "RW"

Issue not reported so far for Cal/CardDAV use-case, therefore I assume it's triggered by your special (mis-)use-case.

And please don't mix up protocol extensions with server purpose. "radicale" is designed to serve Cal/CardDAV requests and store related files (usually small).

It was not designed for standard WebDAV use-case "file storage" , use for that e.g. mod_dav from Apache, this handles also file locking proper and will work with large files.

[leaf-node]

For some reason, Radicale is not matching the collection name with its default rules if it starts with a dot, which SeedVault includes in their WebDAV collection name. Working around that, I was getting a crash (but perhaps on an older version). In any case, see the following issue for more details: #1774

[leaf-node]

The next thing I'll try is to get WebDAV working directly with Nginx. Another option is trying lighttpd.

seedvault-app/seedvault#500 (comment)

[leaf-node]

There are other options like rclone, but for anyone who wants to do this via Nginx:

mkdir /srv/webdata/webdav/ && chown www-data:www-data /srv/webdata/webdav/

server {
    listen 443 ssl default_server;
    listen [::]:443 ssl default_server;

    server_name example.com;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/nginx/keys/example.com.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/keys/example.com.key;
    ssl_password_file   /etc/nginx/keys/password;
    ssl_protocols       TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;

    root                  /srv/webdata/;
    
    location /webdav/ {
        auth_basic           "WebDAV";
        auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/users.webdav;

	client_body_temp_path /var/cache/nginx;

        autoindex on;
        autoindex_exact_size off;
    
        dav_methods PUT DELETE MKCOL COPY MOVE;
        dav_ext_methods PROPFIND OPTIONS;

        create_full_put_path  on;

	dav_access user:rw group:rw all:r ;
    }
}