So I'm a pretty experienced computer user -- have used Macs since '94 or so and have experience with pretty much every MacOS since 7.6. Around 2000 I switched to Windows (for 3D animation/Maya reasons -- sadly the mac wasn't up to that sorta work until the G5 came out) and just recently came back to the fold with a new dual g5
Problem 1) ANYWAYS, so I'm trying to wrap my head around this whole Panther file sharing stuff since things seem to have changed in strange & mysterious ways. I got Personal File Sharing enabled in the Sharing control panel -- no problem. However, I'm still not very clear how you define *which* things are being shared. I downloaded the free SharePoint thingy & it seems to give me the control i need -- is this the only (non-UNIX-intensive) means of defining shares? Mac Classic (and even Windows) let you simply select a folder or disk & give it sharing properties (File>Info>Sharing, Rt-Click Sharing, respectively). OSX doesn't seem to do that.
Problem 2) My second pile of confusion is in regards to how Panther actually mounts other shares. The Network browser thingy in Finder seems all slick & keen except for the fact that most of the time it asks me for a password even when I've already entered one & told it to add to Keychain. I'm assuming I just don't understand the Keychain or soemthing, but it seems like I can't figure out how to allow it seamless access with my other computer. Since I'm just on a small home network I don't need any beefy share security inside my firewall.
Problem 3) Assuming I learn the easy way to mount volumes, I also can't seem to figure out how to unmount volumes manually. Jaguar & earlier let me drag the server to the trash/ejector. Even though I've got Desktop display of "Connected Servers" checked in Finder Preferences, using the Network browser in a finder window doesn't seem to add the shared volume to my desktop for later ejecting. Right clicking on the computer's name in the network browser gives me an eject option but it doesn't seem to disconnect. Furthermore, all sorts of havoc occurs anytime I'm connected to my iBook (or vice versa) and one or both of them go to sleep. My freshly erased/installed Panther iBook just had to be forcibly shut off for this reason (I was connected to it last night, woke up this morning & found it locked up. The G5 was similarly confused but after a minute+ of showing an error message about disconnecting it finally snapped out of it).
Problem 4) As mentioned above, I used SharePoint to configure a single share -- my secondary hard drive. However, my iBook can only occasionally connect to this share. Furthermore, sometimes it gets defunct share entries in its network browser when looking at the G5 (the shared volumes that should be accessible show up as folders with nothing in them) and thus makes new versions of those items which have same name as they should, but with a -1 appended to the end (e.g. backup-1). These new -1 share entries don't work either, as it says the volume doesn't exist when I try to browse in them. I ultimately had to go to /var/automount/Network/COMPNAME/ and manually delete all the entries in there so that it would recreate them. hassle.
Problem 5) Ever since either reinstalling the iBook yesterday (or using SharePoint on the G5 to make that drive share -- I can' tell which since they happened simultaneously), The iBook is very slow to browse items on the G5 once it's connected -- up to 45sec to see what's in a directory. I seemed to remember it being way faster at showing files before. Is this a normal price of having it on airport? the G5 is wired into the router, while the iBook is WiFi... Or does it cache things so that it will gradually get faster?
Any help you can give to explain things that I expected would be fairly simple & straightforward would be much appreciated. Like I said, I've been sharing things without issue for years & only recently seem to be stumbling every step of the way for some reason. I accept that I must just not understand Panther's quirks (or am perhaps expecting things it doesn't include) but I want to make it work as well as can be expected.
Thanks!
Problem 1) ANYWAYS, so I'm trying to wrap my head around this whole Panther file sharing stuff since things seem to have changed in strange & mysterious ways. I got Personal File Sharing enabled in the Sharing control panel -- no problem. However, I'm still not very clear how you define *which* things are being shared. I downloaded the free SharePoint thingy & it seems to give me the control i need -- is this the only (non-UNIX-intensive) means of defining shares? Mac Classic (and even Windows) let you simply select a folder or disk & give it sharing properties (File>Info>Sharing, Rt-Click Sharing, respectively). OSX doesn't seem to do that.
Problem 2) My second pile of confusion is in regards to how Panther actually mounts other shares. The Network browser thingy in Finder seems all slick & keen except for the fact that most of the time it asks me for a password even when I've already entered one & told it to add to Keychain. I'm assuming I just don't understand the Keychain or soemthing, but it seems like I can't figure out how to allow it seamless access with my other computer. Since I'm just on a small home network I don't need any beefy share security inside my firewall.
Problem 3) Assuming I learn the easy way to mount volumes, I also can't seem to figure out how to unmount volumes manually. Jaguar & earlier let me drag the server to the trash/ejector. Even though I've got Desktop display of "Connected Servers" checked in Finder Preferences, using the Network browser in a finder window doesn't seem to add the shared volume to my desktop for later ejecting. Right clicking on the computer's name in the network browser gives me an eject option but it doesn't seem to disconnect. Furthermore, all sorts of havoc occurs anytime I'm connected to my iBook (or vice versa) and one or both of them go to sleep. My freshly erased/installed Panther iBook just had to be forcibly shut off for this reason (I was connected to it last night, woke up this morning & found it locked up. The G5 was similarly confused but after a minute+ of showing an error message about disconnecting it finally snapped out of it).
Problem 4) As mentioned above, I used SharePoint to configure a single share -- my secondary hard drive. However, my iBook can only occasionally connect to this share. Furthermore, sometimes it gets defunct share entries in its network browser when looking at the G5 (the shared volumes that should be accessible show up as folders with nothing in them) and thus makes new versions of those items which have same name as they should, but with a -1 appended to the end (e.g. backup-1). These new -1 share entries don't work either, as it says the volume doesn't exist when I try to browse in them. I ultimately had to go to /var/automount/Network/COMPNAME/ and manually delete all the entries in there so that it would recreate them. hassle.
Problem 5) Ever since either reinstalling the iBook yesterday (or using SharePoint on the G5 to make that drive share -- I can' tell which since they happened simultaneously), The iBook is very slow to browse items on the G5 once it's connected -- up to 45sec to see what's in a directory. I seemed to remember it being way faster at showing files before. Is this a normal price of having it on airport? the G5 is wired into the router, while the iBook is WiFi... Or does it cache things so that it will gradually get faster?
Any help you can give to explain things that I expected would be fairly simple & straightforward would be much appreciated. Like I said, I've been sharing things without issue for years & only recently seem to be stumbling every step of the way for some reason. I accept that I must just not understand Panther's quirks (or am perhaps expecting things it doesn't include) but I want to make it work as well as can be expected.
Thanks!
The Connect To Server still is more reliable however it's been stripped of its auto-detect feature in Panther that it had in Jaguar. And there isn't any good way to unmount a server that you connect to through network browsing I don't think, because if my computer goes to sleep and I turn it back on it will pop-up that stupid error about being disconnected from the server even though I don't have any windows open.