FTP access

climber

I did a check through apples help but it didn't give the answer I need. I want clients and friends to be able to access (1) folder on my system and no others so that they can download or upload files but not have access to anything else. I want to be abel to create a password for each individual ( this can be done on an individual basis). I don't need each person to have their own folder, I can use the same one over and over just change the password for that day so..

Can the built in FTP within sharing do the trick( I don't want to make it complicated for me or them) and if so which folder does that allow access.

I have a DSL modem/router.



thanks

brussell

I've been looking into similar issues myself, but I want full access to my office computer from home. I'd think that you could use "Personal File Sharing," but the router throws a wrench into things that I haven't figured out yet.

climber

I would assume that you could add a access port (allow) in your router settings so that you could have your firewall up and it still work..this is all theory though. I take this from a similar issue with P2P apps and firewalls. I did do a test a year or so ago with my brother that uses a PC with FTP and it did work somewhat( not always ) both behind a firewall and router but I can't remember if he had complete access to my machine..thats that big one for me!

lundy

Turning on Personal File Sharing should allow anyone to access the Public folder (Users/Public). Of course, if you have a router, you have to tell the router which computer to send "afp" requests to.



To do this, find the Port Forwarding section of your router's setup page and set port 548 to be forwarded to the internal (local) IP of the computer that you want to share. For example, if your computer that you wish to share is 192.168.0.3, then tell the router to forward port 548 to 192.168.0.3. Note that if your router is distributing IPs by DHCP, the router may change the internal IP when you reboot the router with one of the computers turned off. To prevent this, assign a permanent IP to the shared computer.



Now the other problem is the external (public) IP of your connection. This can change if your ISP (DSL provider) uses DHCP to assign you an IP. If this is the case, then you will want to check periodically to see if the public IP has changed, and if so, update what your users are using. The cleanest by far way to do this is to go to http://www.dynDNS.org and get a free account there. The thing a dynDNS account does for you is it lets you tell your users to use "www.mypersonalDomain.xxx" and the little app that you install on your machine constantly checks what your public IP is and tells dynDNS what it is so that the domain name you gave your users is always pointing to your machine.



Of course, if you KNOW that your DSL ISP has given you a FIXED IP, then you do not need the dynDNS thing, but it can still let you give out a NAME rather than an IP address to your users.



To access your Public folder once you have everything set up, your users can just choose Go->Connect To Server in the Finder and enter the address



afp://your.public.IP.address OR

afp://your.dynDNS.domain.name



and your Public folder should mount on their machines.

brussell

Hey lundy, since you're answering questions how what would you use for access to more than just the public folder, like my situation where I want to access my office computer? In Sys prefs, there's a check box for "remote login" that says it works through ssh. Where should I look to get info about using that?

lundy

Quote:

Originally posted by BRussell

Hey lundy, since you're answering questions how what would you use for access to more than just the public folder, like my situation where I want to access my office computer? In Sys prefs, there's a check box for "remote login" that says it works through ssh. Where should I look to get info about using that?

For that case, if you just need to transfer files, ssh is perfect. All you do is turn that remote login on, then from the other machine you would type



ssh ip.of.remote.machine



and it will ask for username and password. You log in the same as if you were sitting at that machine.



Of course, if the machine you are connecting to is behind a router, then you have to ssh to the router's public IP address and have the router set up to port forward port 22 (SSH) to the local internal IP address.



Now if you need the GUI, you need to browse, set System Preferences or use GUI apps across the connection, then Apple Remote Access works great, but any VNC server and client would also work, and they are free.



For ssh, type man ssh in the Terminal. It's pretty inscrutable but the basic command is as above.



For VNC, check out Chicken of the VNC and OSXVNC on VersionTracker. Apple Remote Access is the easiest, but it costs I think $150-$200 or more, Apple store.

brussell

Thanks lundy. Do you have any suggestion about where to look for more info about port forwarding with Airport?