share only one folder on the network

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future-ex-pc-userfuture-ex-pc-user
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I want to share only one Public folder with everyone who connects to my computer. Is there a simple way to do this? At the moment I can login to my computer using my admin-password, but I don't want to give other persons that much access to my computer.

Do I have to create another account?

Thanks

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    mattjohndrowmattjohndrow Posts: 1,618member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by future-ex-pc-user

    I want to share only one Public folder with everyone who connects to my computer. Is there a simple way to do this? At the moment I can login to my computer using my admin-password, but I don't want to give other persons that much access to my computer.

    Do I have to create another account?

    Thanks



    i think if you just set sharing in the system preferences, then you should only be sharing the public folder
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  • Reply 2 of 10
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Yes, enabling through the System Preferences makes every user's Public folder shared.



    If you want to share only specific directories, however, that is a bit harder to do. Fortunately, there is a freeware/donationware utility named SharePoints that makes it all quite easy.
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  • Reply 3 of 10
    mattjohndrowmattjohndrow Posts: 1,618member
    brad, you're a smart duck, but if you are the only user logged in, wouldn't it only share your public folder, not everyone elses, nless they enable sharing as well?
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  • Reply 4 of 10
    neutrino23neutrino23 Posts: 1,571member
    Just do a Get Info on your public folder. Set the permisions for this folder as you like (Read and Write, Read Only, Write Only or No Access). When anyone attempts to log in to your account they will have the option to login as Guest which will give them access to your public folder according to the permissions you set.
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  • Reply 5 of 10
    future-ex-pc-userfuture-ex-pc-user Posts: 208member
    thank you for the replies, but this doesn't seem to work for me. I am trying to log in from Windows and I don't get the option to log in as guest. Do I have to create a guest account? Can I then just delete the guest home directory?

    thanks
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  • Reply 6 of 10
    neutrino23neutrino23 Posts: 1,571member
    Good question.



    I have done something like this in the past though I don't know that there isn't a better way.



    I created a second account just for windows login. I enabled this for windows login and I set the permissions so that I could access the public folder from my admin account.



    This gave anyone who logged in full access to the second account. A little more than I wanted but it worked OK for my simple needs at the time.



    From windows if the account allows guest login maybe you could simply press OK without entering a user ID or password when presented with the login screen?
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  • Reply 7 of 10
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by mattjohndrow

    brad, you're a smart duck, but if you are the only user logged in, wouldn't it only share your public folder, not everyone elses, nless they enable sharing as well?



    Everything in the Sharing panel is system-wide. It affects all users regardless of who is logged in. As such, it requires admin user authentication to change.
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  • Reply 8 of 10
    baumanbauman Posts: 1,248member
    I was having this very problem when I was trying to configure SharePoints... but the guest access checkbox wouldn't stick.



    So, I did a little rummaging and found that you need to add a line to your /etc/smb.conf file to get it going.



    Open up smb.conf, and scroll down to the share you want guest access to. It should look something like this:



    Code:


    [ShareName]

    path = /Path/to/Folder







    And possibly some other properties like permissions, read only and the like.



    Add "guest ok = yes" to it on the next line, so it looks like this, keeping your other stuff as it was:



    Code:


    [ShareName]

    path = /Path/to/Folder

    guest ok = yes







    You may also want to add "read only = yes"



    -------

    So, putting this all together here's one of my share entries:



    Code:


    [LAVENDER]

    path = /Volumes/Music/Lavender Jazz

    read only = yes

    guest ok = yes

    inherit permissions = No



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  • Reply 9 of 10
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by future-ex-pc-user

    I am trying to log in from Windows and I don't get the option to log in as guest. Do I have to create a guest account? Can I then just delete the guest home directory?

    thanks



    Yes, you can do exactly that. I did the same for a guest account I made specifically for FTP.



    Probably for security reasons, there is no "guest" account enabled by default on Mac OS X.
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  • Reply 10 of 10
    curiousuburbcuriousuburb Posts: 3,325member
    Forgive me asking the obvious, but what versions of each OS are you asking about?



    IIRC, various version of OS X have had some quirks with cross-platform shares

    Panther has 'enhancements' to SMB networking versus Jaguar versus 10.1.x



    That said, what kind of permissions do the remote users need?



    Generally, the less complicated it needs to be, the better.



    Rather than overthink hypothetical solutions to unasked questions,

    I figured we might double-check the details.
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