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Hello all, I work in a office and we have a Mac set up with file sharing turned and that is it's sole purpose. I have convinced my boss to let me upgrade it to OS X so the handful of PC's can connect to it, the rest of the office, with the exception of me, are running OS 9.2.2 on 233iMacs. Is there an optimal way to run this machine? It has a 400Mhz G4, I will be installing a 7200rpm 8MB cache HD in it and it has over 700MB of ram. My bosses are really cheap so this is about the best I could do. Tips tricks for connecting to this thing from various machines?

While I am on it, Mac OS X server. I really don't know anything about servers, what would you reccomend to someone that knows basic networking and has the set up I am talking about above to understand servers, specifically Mac OS X server? As an after thought, is the 10 user license really limited to 10 users? I ask because we actually have 12 people that would need to get on at the max, but $500 difference just ain't gonna fly.

Thank in advance

[dot_nix]

First of all the 400MHz G4 will be more than enough to act as a file server. And then if you need to get Mac OS X try to get Panther (Mac OS X ver 10.3). It is in many ways superior to Jaguar (Mac OS X ver 10.2).

Now setting up the FileSharing in Mac OS X is very simple and trivial. But before I go on, the client version of Mac OS X 10.3 supports a maximum of 10 users simultaneously connected to your computer. This might be a limitation that will bother you. If not then you are well on your way to setting up a File Sharing Server.

The step are as follows:
1.) Go to "System Preferences" and click on the "Sharing" tab under the category "Internet and Networking"

2.) Then just click on the check box to enable "Personal File Sharing" for Mac Users and "Windows Sharing" for Windows users.

3.) Then your public folder under your home folder will be accessed by other users. You can also set access to different folders by changing the "Ownership and Permissions" to "Read/Write" for "Others".

4.) That's it just have the users go and click on "Go" menu and "Connect to Server..." and they should be able to browe the shared computer and mount the Shared Folders.

Good luck and let me know if you need further details.

[ginoledesma]

Mac OS X has a slew of file sharing and networking options you could use. Since you'll be working with both Macs and Windows-based PCs, then you'll have to settle for the least common denominator, and that would be choosing Windows file sharing (technically called Samba or SMB).

I've configured Samba servers on different OSs before, in particular Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X. Samba can be configured to allow a maximum number of connections to a share (the term used referring to the device/folder being shared), or even certain users only. One graphical editor you can use to modify the configuration file is SWAT (Samba Web Administration Tool), a web-based interface that can be installed on the Mac.

As fond I am of Panther, it has its weaknesses with SMB file sharing, but making it act as a server shouldn't be a problem.

One nuance you should know about with regards to Windows file sharing is the concept of share access levels. Windows has traditionally had two levels: share-level access and user-level access. Share-level access (SLA) is prevalent on Windows 9x/ME-based systems, and user-level access (ULA) is the default in Windows NT/2000/XP. The difference is simply that SLA simply asks for a password to gain access to a share (should one be provided), whereas ULA requires both a username/password combination (again, should one be provided).

Mac OS X by default uses ULA, which means you would have to add a particular user in Mac OS X (through which you can configure to be given Windows file sharing rights) and give it a password. In turn, Windows clients should have access to this username/password account if they want to access the shares on the Mac. There are ways to make Samba use share-level access on the Mac, but it isn't as straightforward as I expect it to be (or at least work reliably).

To help things out, I'd also recommend downloading an application called "Sharepoints", a free system preference pane that allows easy configuration of files/printers to be shared.

If you really want to ease administration, I'd recommend a product called DAVE from Thursby Software. DAVE allows your Mac to easily be configured to act as a client/server for Windows file sharing. For me, it at least solves the problems introduced by Panther. You can download a demo to see how it performs for evaluation purposes.

There are other means and ways, of course, to have your Mac do file sharing. You could always settle for things like FTP, or if you're feeling adventurous, set up your own iDisk-like service internally.

Oh, and about your other Mac clients being left out, they needn't be. You could have the Mac OS X system act as AppleTalk/Apple File Server as well, which to me is a far simpler way of file sharing among Macs. Windows has support for that, but you'll need at least Windows NT or Windows 2000.

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Hey, thanks, that sharepoints looks like it will suit my need just great. Fantastic