Need help with sharing files

S

Stresspuppy

Registered
I just got my 24" iMac and must say I am quite pleased so far. I am switching back to a Mac after having been on a Windows machine for quite some time (my last Mac had System 6.x on it...). I am still working through changing the thinking process from Windows to Mac and would appreciate some help.

My home network is all Windows machines except for my new Mac. I want to be able to share files around and I have already been playing with the settings in System Preferences to get that to work. I have gotten things turned on and all seems to work just fine, but the way Macs to file sharing is a bit different.

What I want to do is have a folder (or several) that anyone on the network can get to. Specifically, I want to have a place that all my iTunes music files are stored that my wife or kids on their Windows machines can get to. My kids use iTunes, so we can share the library through iTunes, but my wife doesn't use it so she wants to be able to get right to the files themselves.

I am having trouble understanding exactly how file sharing works on Mac. In Windows, you can select a folder or group of folders and share with particular users. With the Mac it is more user based.

Can someone/anyone help me understand what I need to do for the above, or can you point me to some stuff I can read? I am a techie by trade so I'm not afraid to dig deep, but as my Mac is 24 hours old, it is still quite new to me and the nuiances of what I need to do still elude me.

TIA!!
 
I'm assuming you have turned on "Personal File Sharing" and "Windows File Sharing" in your System Preferences > Sharing pref pane. So the next step is to put items that you want to give everyone access to into your home folder > Public -- but not in Dropbox. Anything in "Public" is accessible to anyone who can connect to your machine.

So you're wife would connect to your computer and would be presented with "username" as a share point. She would navigate into there and into Public to access the files.
 
Thanks to both of you for the replies. I have turned on the both sharing options and played with it. What I notice is that everything I have is shared then, not just the stuff I want to limit things to.

A suggestion a friend made was to setup a user called "share" and have that account be the one for where things are stored. But when I do this (both Personal and Windows sharing on, select "Share" from the user box) I am not able to put anything in the Public folder for "Share".

When you select a user under the Windows Sharing option, what is that actually doing? Is that whose folders are shared or who has access to what you are sharing?

I may be making this harder than it needs to be, but coming from the Windows world, I'm just trying to understand how the details of sharing on a Mac work related to what I have done for years on the PC. I think I need to shift my overall view of the approach, which is what I don't seem to get a clear picture of. In Windows, you simply select a folder, right click, select sharing and then select the user(s) or group(s) that have access to that. It doesn't matter where the folder is. On the Mac, I gather it is more user based.

To be more specific, right now my first hurdle is the iTunes file. It sounds like the first/easiest option is to set up the sharing, select me as the user and then have iTunes point a fold in Public not Music for storing all the files. Sound right? Are there any other ways specific to using iTunes?
 
While you'll see all of the folders for the user account, only the Public folder should be accessible by "Guests". So when you log in from Windows, don't use your username and password, sign on as a guest and access should be limited.
 
How do I setup "Guests"? Right now from my Windows machine I have to attach to the sharepoint using my login, which I'm not fond of.
 
It would be an option from the Windows site. On the Mac, guests are automatically allowed to connect. If there's no "connect as guest" option in the Windows "connect to server" dialog, then just leave the username and password blank when you connect. Or you might have to try using "Guest" as the username with no password.
 
Here is my scenario:

On the mac, user "Bob" wants to share his stuff, but only the stuff in the public folder. I go to system prefs and select Personal Sharing and Windows Sharing. For Windows Sharing, I select the user "Bob" and type in the password. Good to go.

Now on the Windows side I'm logged in as "Sally" and I have to create a new Network Place. It asks for the location and I enter "\\MyMac.mydomain.com\Bob". It now asks me for a password. The only thing that works is Bob's login and password. And when I do that, "Sally" now has access to ALL the files in "Bob's" home, not just public. Not what I want to do. If I type in "Guest" and leave the password blank, it comes back up and asks me for name/password again (assume that one didn't work). I don't want to log in to the windows machine as Guest.

Any suggestions?

Thanks, and thanks for such quick responses!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top