Follow-up
Tried the Apache/DAV option over OpenVPN - not bad.
Pros:
o Reasonable integration with windows explorer in XP ("Web folders")
o Fast responsive navigation of file tree
o Good download speed (significantly better than the pipe capacity - must be thanks to compression on the VPN)
Cons:
o *Extremely* slow upload speed, yet this should be faster than the d/l. Must be a problem somewhere - hopefully fixable
o Not able to open files from the web folder directly. Maybe this is hackable in XP..?
So all in all, a promising start. I hope to write up my entire process (FreeBSD config, GELI enc partition, pf config, OpenVPN, Apache/DAV config etc) when I get a chance (and before I forget..
)
/sim