How do I go about turning off the subnet?
Unfortunately I don't have MobileMe, but I've setup FTP servers on Windows with a reasonable amount of ease. Is the process for setting up a FTP server on Leopard hard?
I honestly just need this to be on and off when I want and will be sharing several files that are too large to host elsewhere and cannot be physically transported.
Would this work?
I can simply do away with the login/password, and just host the file from the Leopard's Apache server. I have a plug-in with Adium called AdiTunes that generates a link that will point the person whom I've sent it to to a site that is hosted on my computer/network and is streaming the song that was playing at the particular moment the link was generated. I am going to assume that I can host files and the client can download.
Is there anyway I can "upload" a file ready to be downloaded and just forget about all the logging in problems?
If I were sharing files from my machine to the 'net, I would do the following...
1 - Set up a machine on my network as a "DMZ" machine
2 - Enable the OS X firewall on that machine and allow whatever service I needed for my end users to get their files, ftp, httpd or whatever.
3 - Edit my router settings using airport utility to allow incoming connections to the DMZ machine. If you aren't using an Apple router, point a web browser at your "default gateway" and you can edit your settings through the browser. If you don't know your admin password, you can find default admin passwords from the manufacturer of your router. Often they are printed on the label.
4 - Enable ftp or apache on the "DMZ" machine and put the file where it needs to be for the outside user(s) to get it. When you enable Apache, it runs as "nobody" so the file permissions need to be world readable on the file you are sharing and world readable and executable for all of the parent directories of the file you are sharing. Sharing something in your home folder via http is not a good idea. It's better to put the files in a common area and use a symbolic link to make it "look like" the files are in your home folder. This way programs that expect the files to be in your home folder can see them, but apache can also see them without compromising the security of your home folder. Similar guidelines are true for ftpd. If you share something in your home folder by ftpd, it should be in a "common area". On the Mac there is the folder users/shared. I would put shared things there then go in the "security and permissions" dialog of "get info" and make sure everyone can read the files. Symbolic link creation is done in terminal. Let's say you want to share huge quicktime movie files. You would create the folder /users/shared/movies.
You would create a link in your home folder as follows...
ln -s /users/shared/movies movies
This creates an object that looks like a folder in your home area but it's really a link to a public area where you store the movies. Whenever you save a movie there, it shows up where outsiders can see it. Lastly, you might have to change the permissions on each and every movie to allow them to be read by others. I know this sounds like a pain. Sorry. A much bigger pain can arise when you circumvent OS X security because you don't want to "bother with it".
I would not make my primary machine the "dmz" machine unless I didn't have a choice. In that case, I would turn off the "dmz" setting when I was done sharing the file(s). What is DMZ you ask? If you set a machine up as dmz, it is as if it was exposed to the raw internet. Incoming packets are all forwarded to that machine, including worms and various attempts at hacking.
