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Guides: File Sharing Over a Network in OS X
Posted by: Miguel Danielson on Tuesday, May 28, 2002 - 07:02 AM
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For users familiar with OS 9 file sharing through Appletalk, OS X brings some new twists and turns. Much of the traditional Appletalk underpinnings are gone -- no chooser, no traditional User/Groups, and a totally new Sharing preference panel. These changes owe much to the "unix-izing" of the Mac OS, and so it is important to understand concepts like permissions and other file attributes (owner, group, etc.) that are relevant to file sharing under OS X. In this OSXGuide, we'll take a comprehensive beginner's look at sharing files with other users on your network (or across the Internet) with the file sharing features of OS X.
What You'll Need
You won't really need anything to do basic file sharing in OS X. However, because of the way Apple File Server in OS X works, it's not very similar to OS 9 file sharing out of the box and may not let you do what you had done with earlier versions of the Mac OS. To bring back most of what's missing from Appletalk file sharing in OS X, we'll use a fabulous freeware program called SharePoints (Download 350K) from Michael Horn Software. Please note that donations to the author of SharePoints are encouraged if you find it helpful.
Introduction
Users familiar with Unix and its built-in methods for allowing access to a system should understand file sharing under OS X with no problem. By default, each user in OS X has a home folder where that user's preferences, desktop, files, and other individualized data is stored. In Unix, when a user connects to a system, they are brought directly to their home folder. File sharing in OS X works much the same way -- a user who has an account on your system is brough directly to his or her home folder and generally has permission to modify only to the contents of their home folder. Contrast this with OS 9's file sharing, where you would indicate one or more "shared" folders that you allowed users access to with the "Users & Groups" control panel.
Step 1: Turn on file-sharing. To turn on file sharing in OS X, simply go to the System Preferences program and click on the "Sharing" icon. You should see the following preference pane:
Go to the first section, entitled "File Sharing XYZ" where "XYZ" is either "On" or "Off." If file sharing is off, the click the "Start" button in order to startup file sharing. You should also note your IP Address -- it will be necessary when connecting to your computer from another computer on your network. Close out of the System Preferences application.
Step 2: Create a folder you want to share. Many people have multiple hard drives or partitions on their OS X system. By keeping the OS X system on one partition and your other files on another partition, you can more easily and safely deal with situations where a clean install of the system is necessary. In our case, we wanted to put a shared folder on a partition separate from the OS X operating system. Thus, we've created a folder on the root level of this partition called "Shared Folder." You can create your folder wherever you want, and call it whatever you want, but we'll be referring to our "Shared Folder" directory in this OSXGuide.
Step 3: Setup a "sharepoint." Now we're going to set up our "Shared Folder" like most people are accustomed to seeing the "Shared Items" folder in Mac OS 9. This folder will allow users to access it directly when they login via Appletalk.
Download and decompress the SharePoints program.
Note that you can use Sharepoints as either an application or a System Preferences Panel. We'll be using the former option, but you should certainly use the Preference Panel if you prefer (read the READ_ME for instructions). Open the application and you should see the following screen:
Now we need to set a name for our share point. I've entered the name "MD's Share" in the example below. You can put the name of your choice in the "Share Name:" area.
Next, we'll need to fill in the "Directory" portion of our share. Click the "Browse..." button next to that part of the SharePoints screen. Use the dialog box to find the folder you want to share -- in our case, we will select the "Shared Folder" folder we created on our secondary hard drive partition.
Now click the "Create New Share" button near the bottom right corner of the SharePoints window. You'll be prompted to enter your administrator password.
Step 4: Set Sharing Permissions. Now that your share point has been setup, you should think about what kind of access you want various users to have to it. By default, your shared folder is setup with the owner having read and write access, the group having read access, and everyone with access to your system read access. If you want the general public (i.e., anyone who is on your network) to be able to "upload" files to your server, then you'll have to add that permission since it's not part of the default setup.
In order to change any of the permissions for your shared folder, just hit the "Show File System Properties" button and you'll see a sub-window pop out. You can use the settings in that window to allow or take away access for the owner, group, or public.
Step 5: Restart the Apple File Server. Because SharePoints changes settings of the file server in OS X, we'll need to restart the file sharing component of Mac OS X in order for our changes to take effect. To do this, just click the "Restart AppleFileServer" button in the bottom right corner of SharePoints. You should go ahead and enter your administrator password when prompted.
Step 6: Login. Now we'll attempt to login to our newly setup file sharing folder. Logging in to an OS X computer requires you to do so over IP. From an OS 9 computer, go to the Apple Menu --> Chooser. Then, click the "Server IP Address" and enter the IP address from your file sharing computer (you can get this address from the "Sharing" System Preferences Panel that we used in Step 1.
After you've entered your IP address and pressed return, you'll be prompted for a username and password. If you've setup a share that allows any access to "Everyone" then you may also login as "Guest." Otherwise, you'll need to login as a user of your system. If you want to set up user accounts for people on your network, we'll discuss that in a bit. For now, select "Guest" when you login, and that will be sufficient.
Next, you should see a list of the folders you can login to. In our case, we now see a folder called "Shared Folder," which is the share point we just created. You should see the name of the folder you just selected in your SharePoints setup.
Select the shared folder and press "Return." Presto! The folder will appear on your remote computer's desktop.
Going Further With SharePoints
The lesson we've described is very simple. If you're used to sharing your files with a number of people on your network, and would like each of them to have a non-Guest account on your system, then you'll probably want to explore some of the other great features of SharePoints.
Using SharePoints, you can create Groups and Users that are specifically for file sharing purposes. This is a good thing, because you don't want people who connect for file sharing to necessarily have access to SSH, Telnet, administrative programs, or other important resources on your system.
You'll notice that there are several tabs on the top of the SharePoints window. The tabas are "Normal Shares," "Users & Public Shares," "Groups," and "AppleFileServer Properties" The second two tabs are relevant to creating users and groups that will have file sharing access to your system. If you have a number of users that you want to have the same level of access to your Shared Folder, then the best approach would be to create a Group that you can put all of these users in. Then, when you create your share point, you can give the group for your Shared Folder the access you want all of those users to have, while giving "Everyone" no rights at all. This will create a Shared Folder that only the users in the Group you created can access, and nobody else on your network will be able to touch it.
The last tab, "AppleFileServer Properties" allows you to set some nice options for your file server. For instance you can set a greeting message that users will see when they log in. You can also automatically disconnect idle users after a certain amount of time, and set logging preferences:
For more advanced file sharing setups, you'll have to explore the SharePoints application on your own. We recommend that you become familiar with this program if you are going to allow a large number of users access to your system, so we will not do a detailed tutorial here (unless, of course, you ask for it!).
Happy file sharing!
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