Networking questions

[johnnyjibbs]

Hi guys,

Now I'm home from uni for Easter I thought I'd try to connect my 12" PowerBook to our Dell desktop running Windows XP. No problems over ethernet, although I've discovered that XP is just as flaky as Mac OS X on this issue.

It was a little difficult at first, but I ended up being able to play 2-player LAN Unreal 2004 demo and share files.

My first question: how do you enable a Windows computer (or any for that matter) only access your public folder? When I connected, I had to enter my user name and password and then I could access my entire home folder! Does this mean that, people on my uni network only needed to crack my password to have access to my entire hard drive remotely? That seems a little scary. Anyone know how to simply allow Windows users to see my Public folder (with no password required)?

Secondly, is it possible to connect my Mac to the internet (dial-up) via my Dell computer through the ethernet connection between the two? There seems to be an option on Windows XP to set that up (one of those complicated Network Wizards) but it says "Cannot create network" everytime I try. I can't even connect for simple file sharing when I turn the internet sharing preferences on on my Mac.

Any help on these issues would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[jeremy.king]

You are logging into your mac using YOUR OWN login! -- Of course you are going to have access to YOUR OWN home folder (which is not your entire HD, by the way). If you wish to limit access, create another account that can login to the mac and set permissions accordingly such that only your public folder is readable/writeable by other either through the Get Info window or through terminal using the chmod command. I recommend the former if you are not comfortable with using terminal.

Obviously, its only as secure as your password so choose your passwords wisely. Use punctuation and random combinations that can't be cracked by tools that scan the dictionary for possible passwords. I often like to employ a strategy of using the first character (mixing the case) of a movie or book line. So "Hey Guys, Big gulps huh? Welp! See you later" would become something like "hgBGh?w!Cul8r" [credit: Dumb and Dumber]

As for sharing your dial-up, why not just connect to the said dialup account with your PC and enable Internet Connection Sharing from Windows? Then on your mac, you simply configure your network settings to point at the PC as a gateway.

 

[johnnyjibbs]

Thanks for the reply. I guess my home folder is so large that it is basically the whole hard drive. I haven't even got enough disc space to activate FileVault! (My home folder takes up more than half my hard drive). I guess I'm just looking for a similar way to what is the shared folder on Windows computers.

So I can't let someone on the uni network (using Windows) access my drop box, for example, without giving them my password and letting them access all of my user account? Or is the drop box just for multiple users on the same computer?

I might give the second user thing a try.

 

[jeremy.king]

Well you can define alternative mount points for sharing, but thats another beast in of itself. The home folder is the default share and giving someone YOUR login is not the best idea. They would basically be able to do anything YOU can do on any files they "see." Even limiting what they can see, although seemingly harmless, won't prevent them from sitting at your computer and logging in and doing whatever they want. Funny: I used to do this to friends and mess with their term papers, etc. inserting profanities using find and replace funtion in Word. Too funny until a friend submitted her paper with the words still in the paper.

The second login is a much better idea, allowing you to control access through file permissions.