Internet File Sharing on Mac OS X

J

jaredbkt

Registered
My friend has his OS X machine on one side of town and mine is on the other. How can we set them up so we each can have access to the Public folder in the other's home directory. Or can we mount the other's hard disk on our desktop? Anyone have any suggestions on how to setup this Internet file sharing....sort of a WAN I suppose. Thanks in advance.
 
My first try would be Connect to Server and use the IP address. It will be tougher if you are going through any firewall or Router, but it should be possible, as I did it before in OS 9.
 
Just turn on file sharing like SCrossman said (Sharing pane of System Preferences), and then you should be able to go to the Connect to Server (Command-K in the Finder, or go to the Go menu in the Finder), type in the IP of the person you want to connect to, and then enter a username and password. Of course, the username and password is just the same as what you would use to login to the computer itself when it boots up.

If you are behind a firewall or router, just tell the firewall or router to route port 548 to your private IP address with port 548 (I think 548 is for the Apple Filesharing Protocol, but I'm not sure -- go to /Application/Utilities, open up "Network Utility", click the "Port Scan" tab, and put in 127.0.0.1 as the IP -- make sure your File Sharing is turned on before you do this -- this process should give you open ports, and the AFP port is in the 500 range -- it should tell you), and then do the above process.
 
If you are behind a Linux router (like me) , this is the way to "tunnel" in to your mac's.

# on the linux router box
/usr/sbin/ipmasqadm portfw -a -P tcp -L [external IP] 8001 -R [internal IP] 548
/usr/sbin/ipmasqadm portfw -a -P udp -L [external IP] 8001 -R [internal IP] 548

Substitute [internal IP] and [external IP] with actual IP's

So when you want to access your mac from the outside, go to "Connect to server" , type in your blabla.com:8000 and you're in. If you have several mac's you can assign ports 8001,8002... etc .

The same can be done with ftp,web and other services.
 
Using FTP may be a good alternative. I use it all the time to transfer files from the PC in the lab at school to the Mac in my house. Just go to the System Preferences, click on "Sharing", and check "Allow FTP Access". Works beatifully, plus I can put whatever file in whatever folder I want. When you login, it's just like logging into the computer as if you were in front of it. I don't "Allow remote login" because any NUT with my IP address can attempt to login in using a terminal connection and F**k-up my computer. RBrowswer is a good FREE FTP program available for Mac OS X. I use a FTP Commander for the PC in the lab. FTP works beautifully for me.
 
Note that ftp access is a much larger security problem than 'allow remote login'. The latter enables ssh, which when used, encrypts all traffic; without a user account on your machine, not much can be done against it. ftp, however, does everything in plaintext, so if someone in between your client and server can watch traffic, they can see you log in (username and password), and any ftp commands you use. ssh also has sftp, a (minimal) secure replacement for ftp.

Here's an example of snoop (similar to tcpdump) watching ftp traffic:

Code: 
      client -> server       FTP C port=47827 
      server -> client       FTP R port=47827 
      client -> server       FTP C port=47827 
      server -> client       FTP R port=47827 220 server FTP serve
      client -> server       FTP C port=47827 
      client -> server       FTP C port=47827 USER blb\r\n
      server -> client       FTP R port=47827 
      server -> client       FTP R port=47827 331 Password require
      client -> server       FTP C port=47827 
      client -> server       FTP C port=47827 PASS mypassword\r\n
      server -> client       FTP R port=47827 
      server -> client       FTP R port=47827 230 User blb logged
 
Is there a way of mounting my friends HD on my desktop and we can share simply by drag and drop?

My friend just ditched a pc for a g4 and would like to see just what osx can do! Help me show him something cool in file sharing without resorting to 3rd party apps...!
 
Outsider:

Having an icon of your buddy's hd on your desktop is something that Mac OS 9 can definitely do, I don't if OS X can do that (yet). Perhaps someone else here knows more about networking in Mac OS X.
 
Originally posted by ThE OutsiDer
Is there a way of mounting my friends HD on my desktop and we can share simply by drag and drop?

My friend just ditched a pc for a g4 and would like to see just what osx can do! Help me show him something cool in file sharing without resorting to 3rd party apps...!
Click to expand...

When you use Connect to server in the go menu, and connect, it will mount the remote drive on your desktop.

I've done this with a win2k drive with smb so it should work the same between 2 Macs.
 
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