[CentOS] Perhaps slightly OT - Lots of spurious webdav requests.

[Kenneth Porter]

--On Monday, September 15, 2008 10:05 AM +0200 Friedrich Clausen 
<fred at derf.nl> wrote:

> I have most assuredly not told windows to try and use a Web folder on
> the CentOS file server called "/share1", just the CIFS share.

Apparently Windows will search multiple "providers" for the share string 
you pass, and the successful results are then sorted by provider priority.

>From <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832161>

> When an application tries to open a file that exists on a network, the
> I/O manager passes the request to a system component that is named the
> Multiple UNC Provider (MUP). MUP sits logically above all the
> redirectors. When a network path is passed to MUP, it polls all the
> registered redirectors to determine whether they understand the path. The
> redirectors in turn contact the server to establish if the path is valid
> for the specific protocol. If the server can satisfy the connection, the
> redirector will return success back the MUP. If not, the redirector
> returns a failure. All the future file I/O requests for this file are
> passed to the redirector that accepted the path. If more than one
> redirector accepts the path, MUP picks the one with the highest priority,
> as defined in the registry.