Sharing a Mac Volume with Windows Computers

[meldavid]

Sharing a Mac Volume (eg. external Firewire HD) to Windows Computers


1. Create a new user that you can use to log in to your Mac from a Windows computer. This is so your own Mac user account won't get compromised if there is a keylogger on a Windows client. For example create a user called "Guest" with the password "12345".


2. Open a Terminal window and login as a user with admin privileges. Type:

su name_of_your_admin_account

Enter your password. "su" means substitute user.


3. Change to the home directory of the new user you created in step 1. Type:

cd /Users/Guest


4. Create a symbolic link to the volume you want to share. In this example my external Firewire drive is labeled "Mobile HD". Type (spaces have to be escaped with a backslash):

sudo ln -s /Volumes/Mobile\ HD


5. Now there will be an alias to the contents of "Mobile HD" in Guest's home directory. If you created an alias the normal way in the Finder, then Windows doesn't recognise it. You have to use the Terminal to create a symbolic link.

When you log in to your Mac from a Windows computer as Guest, you will be able to read/write to the whole volume.


Let me know if this works for you.

 

[tyr2]

Nice idea. Certainly easier than mucking about with smb.conf.

The interface to SMB/CIFS network sharing is something that really could do with improvement in Leopard. There really needs to be some options to share whole drives or specific folders.

 

[MacSociology]

Or you could use Sharepoints.

 

[MacVault]

Oh, man, don't even get me started about Mac OS X's networking. I HOPE 2 GOD this is fixed in Leopard! Yea, maybe an advanced CLI junkie can figure out how to get it to work, but for the average person to set up shares, configure the permissions, accounts security, etc. it is a nightmare on OS X. Windows XP is so much nicer when it comes to this! WTF is wrong with Apple? Back in the OS 9 days Apple had this figured out and MS was just starting to get it together.

 

[platypus63]

I'm really getting frustrated with networking too! In my 3 years of mac experience, this past week has been the only time that I wish something worked like in windows. I've been trying to share a couple of my folders over a local network within the computers in my apartment. My roommates have PCs, so i have to use windows sharing, which shares my whole home folder. I could make a guest account and share that account, but I don't want to move my Movies, Pictures and Music folders into a different account, if I do front row won't see my movies. I tried making an alias and putting that into the other account, but roommates pc's couldnt recognize the shortcuts so that didn't work. Argh! very frustrating. I wish i could just right click and share the folders with a password instead of all this.

Any ideas?
-Thanks

 

[MacVault]

Yea - if this networking CRAP is not fixed, polished and spit shined in Leopard.... GOODBYE TO MAC OS X. HELLOW WINDOWS XP.

There is NO EXCUSE for Apple to have let this networking garbage in OS X to linger for the last 6 years. WTF!?

 

[yellow]

Yea - if this networking CRAP is not fixed, polished and spit shined in Leopard.... GOODBYE TO MAC OS X. HELLOW WINDOWS XP.

I think you mean "sharing crap", not "networking crap". To me, this seems a rather extreme reason to abandon OS X for Windows. Anyway, this is one reason that SharePoints exists, to fill the gap that Apple hasn't found to be all that important to them.

 

[MacVault]

I think you mean "sharing crap", not "networking crap". To me, this seems a rather extreme reason to abandon OS X for Windows. Anyway, this is one reason that SharePoints exists, to fill the gap that Apple hasn't found to be all that important to them.

Yea, ok, call it sharing then. I don't want to have to buy a third party solution to fill the gap of something that is sooooo important in modern operating systems now days. There is just no excuse for it, APPLE!

 

[platypus63]

I just downloaded SharePoints, it's not as simple to begin using it as I had hoped. Hopefully it'll do what's needed.
"Macvault" - its pretty crazy that its so hard and we need extra tools and hassles to share folders, while at the same time it is a breeze to connect to others shared folders through "network" and its just like navigating your own files in finder. sigh...

Thanks "MacSociology" and "yellow" for sharepoint recommendation.

-platypus63

 

[yellow]

Yea, ok, call it sharing then. I don't want to have to buy a third party solution to fill the gap of something that is sooooo important in modern operating systems now days. There is just no excuse for it, APPLE!

Well.. I think you need to realize something. It's 'soooooo important' to you. Not necessarily to everyone else. Personally, I share data via a server, it's much safer. I also share via a web interface, it's much more user friendly.

 

[Fini]

It is hard to believe that while OSX has matured a great deal that it lacks the built-in capability to share as its predecessor had. I have to agree with MacVault on this one, this is a pretty major shortcoming that really needs to be addressed if it's going to compete with Windows on every front.