[Artanis]

I have a Mac mini at the office and I want to make it a disk drive for everybody to access (everybody meaning about 12 Macs with both Panther and Tiger operating systems).

So I have connected the mini Mac to the LAN and I have set all it's sharing files types on and apple talk on as well (on automatic setting), but I can't directly access the files from him (by files I mean different Office files, or images). I think I kinda lost myself trying to configure this.

The main thing in wich I am interested in is to create a disk image (or a partition if a disk image is not possible) on this mini Mac (about 50 GB from it's 80) on wich all the other Macs could log on to and to be able to work on (I mean to have read/write privilegies as well as opening files from the Mac mini directly and at the same time).

My question is, what settings do I need to do from the network, sharing and accounts prefpane (and maybe from other settings too) in order for me to use this Mac mini as I stated upwords?

Also after you guys tell me how to do this I want to install SuperDuper on the Mac mini and to program him to do a backup on a firewire disk drive every night.

10x alot, I wait for your answers with huge interest

[milhous]

this may be inaccurate, but i believe this is only possible if you create a user account on the mini for each person. also, os x client may limit the number of simultaneous logins at any given time.

sorry that i can't be of further help. i'm sure others may know more about this like sysadmisn.

[Cadaver]

On OS X client, if you want everyone to just share a single partition, that's pretty easy.

Set up a partition of the size you want to share (or attach an external firewire or USB drive to share).
Turn on file sharing the Sharing preference pane.
Either add an account to the machine (call it "shared" or "server" or something handy) or just give everyone the name/password of the main account.
On each client machine, go to the Go menu in the Finder, Connect to server, then open the Mac mini. Enter the name/password of the account you set up (each client can use the same name/password), and choose a volume to mount (obviously pick the volume to be shared). It'll mount on the desktop.
Done.

This is how I do it at home - three machines sharing the same volume (backups and iPhoto library).

AFAIK, I believe you'll need the server version of OS X if you want people to only be able to see the volume to be shared, and not all the other volumes on the server machine. If someone knows otherwise, I'd like to know, too.

[analogika]

The trick is, and it sounds like this may be your problem, knowing what the server is called.

In the Sharing System Preference pane of the Mac mini, the computer's name can be entered at the top. By default, it's something like "Artanis's Mac mini". Below that it says that machines on the local network can connect by accessing Artaniss-Mac-mini.local. If you change the name to something simple like "miniServer", then the network address will be miniServer.local.

The cool thing is that on the client machines, once you've connected, you can simply create an alias to any directory on the shared server drive and put that in the dock or on the desktop or anywhere. Double-click it, and the folder opens - automagically mounting any network shares it might have to to access it.

[NeilCharter]

Cadaver has the right idea. You can also have the share mount on startup by dragging the volume to login tabs in Sys Prefs / Accounts. You'll have to do that for every account on every machine that you need to have access the share.

Obviously OS X Xerver would do this more efficiently.

Good luck