Actually, the only problem all these authentications cause me is that they effectively spam the log on the cloud server.  I discovered the problem when I was rooting around on the NAS and noted that the cloud server's log had reached 22GB.  This traffic also slows down array scrubbing because the NAS is constantly writing the log - which takes it away from scrubbing.  This extends the time to scrub from about one day to anywhere from 3 to 5 days (40TB RAID6 array).

I configured this way, with the dev environment on the NAS, about 9 months ago.  Performance has been satisfactory in all regards, except for this and a problem with symlinks not working (as you say, webdav is not great for a filesystem but I am just figuring this out).

Perhaps another reconfigure is in my future.  But I think I will wait until I return from Ukraine.

"The workstation and the NAS that hosts the cloud server are located on the same LAN."

Many people seem to do this, but I still can't understand it:
Why do you use WebDAV as a network file system in the LAN when there are proper network file systems like NFS and SMB? (WebDAV is not very well suited for a file system.)

Werner

This is the line used to mount the davfs share:
sudo mount -t davfs2 https://192.168.2.27:12080/nextcloud/remote.php/webdav/ /home/jiml/owncloud -o rw,uid=jiml,gid=jiml

So, yes, it is using https and presumably one of those authentication protocols.  Is there another more persistent way?  The workstation and the NAS that hosts the cloud server are located on the same LAN.

The application that is causing the requests to be made is Kate.  Kate is a GUI based editor for KDE.  I use it almost exclusively in my development work, and I find that having my development directory on my cloud server is very convenient given that I may be doing work from pretty much anywhere.  At home I use my workstation, at all other locations I use my laptop.  It is the workstation that mounts the webdav share.

Server is Nextcloud 12 hosted on NAS4Free (FreeBSD system).

Client is Mageia 6 Linux.  A webdav share is mounted in the user's home directory providing access to the files in the Nextcloud instance.

User has Kate open, with multiple files from the webdav share open in the editor.

Nextcloud shows the client authenticating with the server several times a second.  How can I stop this and have the share remain connected?

Server does not support locks.

Contents of ~/.davfs2/davfs2.conf

# Available options and default values
# ====================================

# General Options
# ---------------

# dav_user        davfs2            # system wide config file only
# dav_group       davfs2            # system wide config file only
# kernel_fs       fuse
# buf_size        16                 # KiByte

# WebDAV Related Options
# ----------------------

# use_proxy       1                 # system wide config file only
# proxy                             # system wide config file only
# servercert
# clientcert
# secrets         ~/.davfs2/secrets # user config file only
# ask_auth        1
  use_locks       0
# lock_owner      <user-name>
# lock_timeout    1800              # seconds
# lock_refresh    60                # seconds
# use_expect100   0
# if_match_bug    0
# drop_weak_etags 0
# allow_cookie    0
# precheck        1
# ignore_dav_header 0
# server_charset
# connect_timeout 10                # seconds
# read_timeout    30                # seconds
# retry           30                # seconds
# max_retry       300               # seconds
# add_header

# Cache Related Options
# ---------------------

# backup_dir      lost+found
# cache_dir       /var/cache/davfs2 # system wide cache
#                 ~/.davfs2/cache   # per user cache
 cache_size      850                # MiByte
# table_size      1024
# dir_refresh     60                # seconds
# file_refresh    1                 # second
# delay_upload    10
 gui_optimize    1

# Debugging Options
# -----------------

# debug           # possible values: config, kernel, cache, http, xml,
                  #      httpauth, locks, ssl, httpbody, secrets, most

Contents of /etc/davfs2/davfs2.conf

# Available options and default values
# ====================================

# General Options
# ---------------

# dav_user        davfs2            # system wide config file only
# dav_group       davfs2            # system wide config file only
# kernel_fs       fuse
# buf_size        16                 # KiByte

# WebDAV Related Options
# ----------------------

# use_proxy       1                 # system wide config file only
# proxy                             # system wide config file only
# trust_ca_cert
# servercert                        # deprecated: use trust_ca_cert
# trust_server_cert
# clientcert
# secrets         ~/.davfs2/secrets # user config file only
# ask_auth        1
# use_locks       1
# lock_owner      <user-name>
# lock_timeout    1800              # seconds
# lock_refresh    60                # seconds
# use_expect100   0
# if_match_bug    0
# drop_weak_etags 0
# n_cookies       0
# precheck        1
# ignore_dav_header 0
# use_compression 0
# min_propset     0
# follow_redirect 0
# server_charset
# connect_timeout 10                # seconds
# read_timeout    30                # seconds
# retry           30                # seconds
# max_retry       300               # seconds
# add_header

# Cache Related Options
# ---------------------

# backup_dir      lost+found
# cache_dir       /var/cache/davfs2 # system wide cache
#                 ~/.davfs2/cache   # per user cache
 cache_size      950                # MiByte
# table_size      1024
# dir_refresh     60                # seconds
# file_refresh    1                 # second
# delay_upload    10
# gui_optimize    0
# minimize_mem    0

# Debugging Options
# -----------------

# debug           # possible values: config, kernel, cache, http, xml,
                  #      httpauth, locks, ssl, httpbody, secrets, most