# [HOWTO] -  Setup FTP access on your OSX machine.



## swizcore (Dec 16, 2001)

This is actually quite simple due to OSX's GUI for creating users and turning on FTP access. Follow along and marvel at the simplicity of it all...

1. Open "System preferences"
2. Click on "Users"
3. Create a new user ( you may create either a specific user or a generic one for many people to have access to)- here I will create a user account which will be accessed by a specific person.
Username-johnny
Password- socko123
Do not give them administrative access unless you wish to flirt with disaster.
4. Next click on "sharing" in system preferences.
5. Click on "allow FTP access"
6. Now just give "johnny" your computers IP address (located at the bottoom of the sharing pane in "system Preferences") and let him know the username and password you set his user account up with.
7. Johnny can now access your system via any FTP protocol. But with this setup he only has access to his user directory-which should be fine for most users just wanting to share files.

Of course with Firewalls involved there may additional steps to account for but this will get you going nicely otherwise. If you are dealing with Firewall issues please respond and we will address the Firewall issues.


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## swizcore (Dec 16, 2001)

Thanks bro. Somebody always has my back around here


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## Asimis (Dec 16, 2001)

Thanks for your helo swizcore!


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## liquidg3 (Dec 16, 2001)

I'm on a lan, my local ip on the network:  

10.0.0.2

the ip i get when i go to www.ipaddress.net is:

216.160.162.246

how do i get people who connect to: 216.160.162.246, routed to my computer at: 10.0.0.2

sorry i don't  know  any terms or anything more technical, just got into this ftp stuff..

thanx


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## schehan (Jan 10, 2002)

I wonder how exactly one could do that via airport network. (since the laptop are assigned different IP than what is assigned on the base station). It'll be sort of hopping around.

Schehan


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## pal6695 (Aug 28, 2002)

>>how do i get people who connect to: 216.160.162.246, routed to my computer at: 10.0.0.2 

Well, it looks like you can not easily do that, the reason is 10.x.x.x is a private address space.  This means it will not be routed in the internet.  By the looks of things 216.160.162.246 would be your Firewall/cable-DSL router/gateway address.  The only way you would be able to set it up so that someone could access your machine via the internet is if your firewall/router/gateway supports port level routing.  IE anything that is inbound FTP (ports 21-22) or telnet (port 23) etc... would be routed to your computer.

There are a few problems with this, anything that is incoming by IP/UDP port number will be routed to that machine and that machine only.  The only way you could get around that is to have your ISP issue you a second IP address.  Not all ISP's will let you and not all NAT systems support it.

Don@digits-its.com
iMac G4 15" 700 / 256 (ask U.h P.arcel S.omewhere what happened to my extra RAM...)


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## pal6695 (Aug 28, 2002)

This brings me to the question I have, I knew the answer last week but for whatever reason I just can think of it now (it might be the lack of sleep and the hour) Anonymous FTP sites, how do I create one with a "drop box"


Thanks,
don@digits-its.com
iMac 15" 700Mhz 256MB (should be more....)


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## gobera (Aug 31, 2002)

I can't open the Sharing panel. Every time I try to do it, it quits System Preferences and says "The application System Preferences has unexpectedly quit".

I think this began when I downloaded Security Update 2002-08-23 from Software Update.

Any suggestions on how to fix this? It's frustrating.


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## PowermacG4_450 (Sep 16, 2002)

How does apple remote desktop differ from what you described? 

what does ARD do? How does it work? how can I set it up? Do I need it? 

My understanding is that apple remote desktop allows me to get on a workstation and see their desktop/screen like im actually sitting in front of their puter! ? 

am I wrong/right? neither? 

thanks.


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## baffone (Sep 17, 2002)

a very useful link for everybody trying to use his/her mac as a virtual server and having a router: http://www.creativemac.com/2002/04_apr/tutorials/macnetwork.htm

baffone


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## NickBurns (Oct 13, 2002)

Wich FTP programs do you guys suggest using ?? I'm mainly just trying to find somthing for transfering  big files over the net.

What types of speed can i expect to get using one of these programs? Both computers are G4's,Os x, on cable......Not sure if that matters....Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks again...


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## PowermacG4_450 (Oct 14, 2002)

I like fetch. Works for me. used it for years. Its not real fancy, but get the job done. version 4.0.2 is current I beleive. its drag and drop from the finder, which is pretty cool. just drag file from the finder over to the fetch window. easy.


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## NickBurns (Oct 19, 2002)

Once i have set up a user and a password, does the user have to use the same ftp program i am??? 

Thanks in advance...


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## PowermacG4_450 (Oct 20, 2002)

im lost. are you trying to use a ftp program to say, upload files to a web server, or.... are you trying to setup access to your mac with another mac? 

--
www.artieevans.com
The Macintosh site "for the rest of us"


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## NickBurns (Oct 20, 2002)

Sorry for the confusion, i am trying to allow my friend with another G4, to get into my machine over the net, to get rather big audio files. I was told the best way to do this is by an ftp protocol.

Any more help would be appreciated.....
Thanks


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## PowermacG4_450 (Oct 20, 2002)

Sorry for the confusion, i am trying to allow my friend with another G4, to get into my machine over the net, to get rather big audio files. I was told the best way to do this is by an ftp protocol. 
------------

Piece of cake... if your both using osX, real easy.... simply go to system prefs on your machine, and create a user (under accounts, choose new user)..... give him a name and password. (let him know what they both are).

Give him your IP address.... of your mac. this can be found under the network panel on your mac. 

from the OsX finder, he can choose: "connect to server" under the go menu. 

He should be able to mount YOUR harddrive on his mac... anything you put in the public folder will be available for him to download... 

of course, you can set permissions and such for him to do more, to see everything on your mac... if you choose to do so. 

hope this helps.


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## NickBurns (Oct 20, 2002)

Thanks alot bro... Seems Im doing everything correctly. I didnt know he could pick "connect to server" in the finder, from Go. That seems easy enough. I was told i needed to use an ftp program. So this will be it then? I dont need to use fetch?

What do you suppose would be the speed i could expect from doing this through the finder?? I will be trading large audio files. Just curious......

Thanks again for the help


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## PowermacG4_450 (Oct 21, 2002)

I was told i needed to use an ftp program. So this will be it then? I dont need to use fetch? 

What do you suppose would be the speed i could expect from doing this through the finder?? I will be trading large audio files. Just curious...... 
---


I only use fetch when I upload my web pages to my hosting server.... ive got a buddy, and him and I swap files using the osX finder. And the go>connect to server command.... 

speed. Now thats another issue... he and I both use cable..... and doing this file transfer over the net isnt a speed demon by any means.... if we had T1 lines im sure it would rock. with cable connected via ethernet, its sometimes a tad slow.... depends on what time of day or night we transfer the file. 

If your sending something real big, send it at night while your in bed..... would be faster than say during peak hours during the day. 

good luck


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## NickBurns (Oct 21, 2002)

Thanks for the info, i should be good to go. What about getting into my machine from lets say a pc somwhere else? How would i go about this??? 

Thanks again,


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## PowermacG4_450 (Oct 21, 2002)

getting into your mac from a pee cee? 

there are several programs that allow that. never used them though. dave I beleive is one. ? (someone correct me if im wrong)... another is timbutu..... they allow macs to be connected to pee cee networks and printers.


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## NickBurns (Oct 21, 2002)

Thanks,



> getting into your mac from a pee cee?



HAHAHA!!!!!!!!! Pee Cee..... i never heard that before....

How do i make it so if you type in my ip address in any browser window, you can access my computer via a username and password????

Sorry for all the questions,
Thanks again,


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## PowermacG4_450 (Oct 21, 2002)

hmmmm, not sure about that one.. ya got me!


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## PowermacG4_450 (Oct 21, 2002)

did I help you any? I hope so. 

hey, not required, but if you like, check out: 

http://www.artieevans.com/sponsors.html

and see if you can help us..... its a new site... 

appreciate your help..... good luck, stay away from those pee cee's.


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## NickBurns (Oct 21, 2002)

Thank you again,

Let me try and explain....

About a year or so ago, my buddy gave me his ip address so i could get some audio plugins from his computer. When i typed in his address, it took me to a text-like page. Then i saw thew file called "plugins.sit" So i clicked on it, downloaded it, unstuffed it, and got all the files i needed.

Now that i am starting to learn a bit about it, Im wondering how he did that. I remember it was like a 90 meg file, and i got it in less than a minute.

Maybe he had a different type of setup?? I'm Not sure...

Any more help would be appreciated.
Thanks


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## trickie (Oct 28, 2002)

does anyone know how to set default umask for ftp uploads?

At the moment every time someone uploads to my server, i have to go in an manually change the permissions.


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## Ebonit (Nov 6, 2002)

Okay Nick, 
there are two ways to do this

*1 - through the http protocol*

A - The nicest way 
to do this is to make a webpage, that you put in the "Sites" directory of your home dir. 
If you don't know how to make a webpage, then skip this and go to 2 OR try to get the knowledge to make a simple webpage(it isn't that hard, just buy html for dummies and off you go)
If you created your webpage, call this page index.html and save it in your Sites dir. Then people can just access that page by typing the url youripadress/~yourusername.

*What to put in that webpage?????*
In that webpage you put the title of your audiofile with a link to the file that you want to share.  You do this for all your files. You can just drop those files in the same sites directory, as long as the link also point to those files. It is recommended that you stuff these files with dropstuff!!!

B - the crude way
is to just drop your files (stuffed!) in your sites directory and remove the file index.html . That way your friend just sees your directory with all files sitting there. 

Now your friend opens internet explorer and types:
 youripaddres/~yourusername. 
Then she/he can see
a - your webpage
or
b - all the file that you dropped in your sites dir

if your friend just clicks these links or the files, the download starts.

*2 -The other way to do this is through ftp*
That is explained very well in the first entry of this topic


*Then you asked what program to use for ftp*
I use Captain ftp and I think it is just the best ftp tool for OS X right now. You can download it through
www.xdsnet.net/captain/CaptainFTP1.4.tar.gz
This is shareware but you can get a free registration when you are a home user. You'll have to register for that though.

Open Captain ftp. 
Go to the menu Connection/addressbook
click new
type a session name (like "my friend's supercool G4"
type the-ipaddress-you-want-to-connect-to, or, if your friend has his own domain type www.yourfriendsdomainname.com
give the username that your friend provides you with
type the pasword
hit OK and there you go

Remember though that if you add ftp-access to your own machine that your friend can see and download everything that is in your homedir. If you don't want that you'll have to create a separate account with the name yourfriendsname an a password and drop all your files in the homedir of yourfriendsname.

If you're behind a router....just reply and i'll get you going.


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## NickBurns (Nov 7, 2002)

Thanks alot, i really appreciate it. 
I do know a little about html, and am looking to get a website up soon. Nothing fancy, just a way for my band mates to get certain tracks from my computer. 

Thanks for taking the time to answer that question. Sounds like the http protocol is the way to go. 

Wich of these ways will get you the fastest download times?? I realize there are alot of factors, but wich one is fastest in a perfect world???

Thanks again,


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## jeroenvw (Nov 8, 2002)

Thnx for explaining the FTP option for OSX. But the biggest problem you've also mentioned: being behind a firewall. Or: we use a router, Vigor 2200E, and this router gives out the Ip adresses. But because of this router I cannot acces a OSX ftp server from elswhere. Could you help me out?

Thanx a lot in advance

Zig


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## Ebonit (Nov 8, 2002)

Being behind a router is not a problem. 

First of all you need to give your Mac a static IP adress because you have to direct incoming access to that address. You can give your machine any address in the 192.168.x.x range as long as it is not within the range that your router uses for its DHCP engine. Since you use a vigor 2200E I asume you use the 192.168.x.x range.

Changing you dynamic addres into a static address is done in System Preferences/Network. You can see an example here. (I use the 10..x.x.x range)

Next thing you have to do is get your router to redirect all incoming ftp traffic  to your Mac. Also http could be redirected.
On the vigor 2200E you do that in Advanced Setup> NAT setup> Configure Port Redirection Table. (You're a lucky bastard that I have the same router  ) You can find an example here. if you have a different brand router then it must be something like this. You'll understand if you see it.
In this example you see that my public  Ports are 8080 and 2121. Normally that would be 80 (http) and 21(ftp) but my cable company won't allow trafic to those ports to get through so I changed it  tot 8080 and 2121. That means that all incoming trafic should also be send to those ports.
*Note:* I had troubles to configure this on my mac so I had to do this in windows. For some reason the router doesn't like it when I fill in the private ip address on the mac (IE)

That's all!
Now you have to know the ip address that your provider gives to your router. Your friends can now fill in the url ftp://your-router's-ip-address or ftp://your-router's-ip-address:2121 and they'll have access to your ftp site. (if you set it up properly)
same with http:
http://your-router's-ip-address or http://your-router's-ip-address:8080
Note that if your provider gives you a dynamic address that it will change regularly so you'll have to checkup on that on a regular basis.

Offcourse you can get your own domain as well but that is a whole different story 

success, Ebonit


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## kuroyume (Nov 12, 2002)

Thank you very much for this gem of information.  I was just going about finding info on setting up ftpchroots and ftpusers and so forth and so on.  This makes the process sooooo much easier and is exactly what I was looking for!

Thanks again,

Robert Templeton


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## kuroyume (Nov 12, 2002)

Sorry to say, I just tested a "test user" account from my Wintel machine using WinSock FTP32 and was able to ".." back into the rest of the system without any hesistation or complaints.  Not very secure when anybody with FTP access can fiddle with the rest of my system.  This "test user" does NOT have administrative abilities and all capabilities have been unchecked.

Anyway to prevent this?

Thanks again,

Robert Templeton


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## kuroyume (Nov 12, 2002)

> _Originally posted by NickBurns _
> *Thanks,
> 
> 
> ...



Don't know if you got an answer to this already (someplace else), but the way to do that from a browser is:

ftp://username@<ftp address>

where <ftp address:> is the IP address or DN (like ftp.myftpserver.xxx or www.mydomainname.xxx>.  The browser should prompt for a password in order to log in.  I also think there is a way to include the password in the URL, but forget how to do it exactly.

Robert Templeton


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## satanicpoptart (Nov 24, 2002)

i would make a new thread for this question but for some reason i dont have acces...

how do i make files outside of the home directory? i have two hard drives and i want to make all my music available by ftp. my music is all located on the slave drive, how can i access those files on the slaves drive via ftp?


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## Ebonit (Dec 5, 2002)

You do this by making a symbolic link to the drives you want. a symboli link is like an alias but it cannot be seen within the mac interface but it can when you use a browser or from windows.

To make a symbolic link you have to use the terminal.

When you open terminal, the directory you are in is your home directory. that means that when you create a link to another directory/file, that link will sit in you homedir.  

type:
ln -s /volumes/yourharddrivename

or... if you have used spaces in the harddirve name:
ln -s "/volumes/your hard drive name" (within perenthesis)

that's it...you have created the link and when you connect through ftp, html or windows to your home directory, you will see the disk you want as a directory.

Now, in terminal, if you give the command 
ls -al
you will see all files that sit in your homedir. So you will see the link like this:


```
[woodstox:~] eric% ln -s /volumes/data_2
[woodstox:~] eric% ls -al
total 22
...
lrwxr-xr-x   1 eric  unknown     15 Dec  6 00:58 data_2 -> /volumes/data_2
...
```

(as a matter of fact you will see a lot more lines here but I only show the first three and the line that really matters)
this link will tell you that in this case *data_2* links to */volumes/data_2*


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## coolgrafix (Dec 22, 2002)

Swizcore mentioned:  

"7. Johnny can now access your system via any FTP protocol. But with this setup he only has access to his user directory-which should be fine for most users just wanting to share files."

But this isn't the case. Sure, Johnny will start his FTP session in his home directory, but nothing prevents him from browsing the whole bloody hard drive.

With 10.2.3 using lukemftpd, things have changed a bit. There no longer seems to be a way to trap the user in a directory with the ftpchroot method, as evidence by the meriad of posts in other threads. FYI.


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## NickBurns (Dec 22, 2002)

> Don't know if you got an answer to this already (someplace else), but the way to do that from a browser is:
> 
> ftp://username@<ftp address>
> 
> ...



Thanks Robert.....but no go....
Does anyone have a link to a step by step way of doing this???? Im still having problems making this happen......

Thanks again


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## kuroyume (Dec 22, 2002)

That' s the way to do it from a browser:

ftp://username: password@ ftp_address: port/path

username, password, port, path may be excluded.  No spaces (just to get around smiley problems)

Check this link:

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/ftpurl.html

If you can't do it, than something is wrong with your browser ftp access, not the semantics.


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## NickBurns (Dec 22, 2002)

Thanks again Robert....

I checked out that link, helped out alot.
I set my machine up exactly how everyone said to. Now Im gonna go to my buddys house and see if his is the same.....

Thanks again


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## SouthOfHeaven (Dec 23, 2002)

Ok, I think I've followed every instruction. There's a slight problem however even though I log in as "the other user" (not Admin), I can still see ALL files on my computer, not only the "other users" files. Is it because I'm trying it from my OWN Mac, logged in as Admin or what? I only want the people who logs in to see what I want them to see!!!


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## gatorparrots (Dec 23, 2002)

What you want is called *chrooting*.

You will either have to fix the built-in FTP daemon or replace it altogether in order to obtain that functionality, as it is broken in 10.2.x (unless someone can confirm that it was otherwise fixed with the 10.2.3 update).

http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25129
http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12942
http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22849


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## yikes-user (Jan 10, 2003)

All of the comments provided should be helpful, most important is router settings (if you have one) if not and both of you are using OS X then simply setting up file sharing as described should  work. the web page provided by baffone  is clear enough on how to set that up. Router settings vary greatly so if you are dealing with them you'll need to learn your brands setup routine.


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## Koalition (Jan 15, 2003)

I dont get this.. I set up a new user.. But using Fletch FTP client I can still browse around the entire hard-disk..


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## NickBurns (Jan 18, 2003)

Yikes-user.....

How do i find out how to do this with a router??? Now i can do everything fine, if Im directly into my modem. If Im through my router, and other Macs, my ip is unfindable.....

I assume the router is giving out addresses to each of my Macs???

BTW, its a D-Link  DI-604. I got it cuz it was Mac osX compatible.....

Thanks for any info,.....


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## chelsea98 (Feb 8, 2003)

you could use rumpus ftp server which allows you to set up a server with both ftp and http access.you can have an account set to allow mutliple connections,and also you can throttle the bandwidth usage for that account.the biggest problem im having at the moment(and i could probably use more ram,192 installed,290-ish with VM)is that rumpus is a severe CPU hog,and when people are connected,everything slows down.it tooke me 5 minutes to scroll down the fron page of the bbc news website,and it took me two minutes to quit rumpus itself.having said that,another option,should you wish to use is,is to run a hotline server.easy to setup,and all downloads are resumable.works perfectly in classic although there are a few bugs which could do with ironing out in OSX.

also,if you want to be able to control your mac from a pc,there is timbuktu which does the trick.however there is another app called VNC which is free and works pretty well.easy to use and easy to configure the server on your mac.you can get it over  here .you can get pee cee versions of the client software over  here 

fetch is purely an FTP client,not an FTP server.


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