[waterbuck]

Hi-
I have been trying to get my OSX.2.4 laptop onto my company's Windows network for purpose of saving files and sharing them with others.

Using samba file protocol I can find the major drives and servers on the company directory, and mount them on my desktop. When I double-click them, however, I don't actually see the names of most of the folders on those servers and I can't find the folder they set aside for me. I am an authenticated user and I can access those same files and servers through the Windows PC on my desk. The problem is only with the Mac Laptop I bring in.

My most mac-windows savvy friend says the problem lies in something called Windows Active Directory, a Windows based system for networking that can be tricky for Macs.

I looked this up and found one detailed document, suggesting that "yes, Macs can be installed as clients on a Windows Active Directory IF THERE IS A MAC OSX SERVER ON THE NETWORK AS WELL" (http://www.apple.com/server/pdfs/Mac...eDirectory.pdf)

Well, I don't think I can bring in a server or induce the company to buy one.

What can I do?

[coolmacdude]

That document is describing how to set it up with OS X Server in a pre 10.2 environment. With Jaguar you don't need a Mac server because it has integrated AD support. I don't know the specifics of how to troubleshoot it though.

[Scarpa]

You should not need to authenticate against Active Directory in order to browse shares. You will need to authenticate using your work logon credentials for *each* share you wish to connect to.

You should be prompted for a username/password/domain when you mount the share. If it's not prompting you then the share most likely has share access enabled for "Everyone" and has permissions set on the directory itself using NTFS. And now that I think of it, if that is the case then you do need to somehow authenticate against the directory.

My recommendation would be to setup a share on your desktop PC that has no NTFS permissions (ie. access for "Everyone") but share permissions for your domain account.

This way you can use your PC as a 'staging' area for files you wish to copy to/from your mac. This is how I handle things at work myself.

I would like to figure out how to integrate with Active Directory using LDAP, but I don't know enough about either LDAP or OS X's integration with LDAP yet.