Biology Biology Computing Biology Applications SAS Computing Penn Computing
 

Setting up file sharing under Mac OS X

This page details how to enable file sharing under Mac OS X 10.3. The instructions are mostly applicable to other versions of OS X as well:

  1. Enabling web file sharing
  2. Enabling personal Apple file sharing
  3. Enabling FTP file sharing
  4. Enabling Windows file sharing

Enabling web file sharing

Web file sharing allows you to share documents with any user who has internet access and a web browser. OS X makes it easy to turn your computer into a web server, giving you the freedom to create web pages and documents viewed by the entire world.

Please remember that the files which you place in your "Sites" folder to share on the web become immediately public.

 

There are two directories which we can use to share web files. The first is the computer's site, or the root site. The next is the user's site. The root site can be found just by typing the IP address of the computer into any web browser. For directions on how to find your IP address, please visit this page:

Now that you have web sharing enabled, go ahead and try it. Find your IP address, open up a web browser window, and type the following into your browser's address bar:

Of course, substitute "youripaddress" for the IP address you found by following the directions above. You should see the following page:

If you would like to modify the contents of your computer's root site, do the following:

The second directory which we can use is your user's site. To place files in your user's site, do the following:

This site can be found by typing in the IP address of your computer into any web browser followed by a tilda (~) and your short username. Thus, the URL template is as follows:

So, for instance if we wanted to access the file listed in the image above, we would type the following into our web browser's address bar:

Enabling personal Apple file sharing

Apple's personal file sharing allows you to share documents with any other Macintosh user who is located on the same subnet. Thus, any Macintosh connected to the Biology network can share data with any other Macintosh on the Biology network, given some simple configuration.

There are now two ways in which another user may connect to your computer.

The first method is accomplished by following these steps:

The second way in which a user may connect to your machine is through the Network menu in the Finder window.

You can share files with users who log into your computer as a Guest by placing them in your Public folder in your user directory.

As well, users may place files into your Drop Box to share with you. If you have guests connect to your computer, you may want to check this drop box to see if anyone has left files for you.

Enabling FTP file sharing

FTP file sharing allows you to share documents with authenticated users via an FTP client. This is most useful for users who have accounts on one machine to transfer data to another computer which is on a different operating system or on a different network.

In order to connect to this computer, you must run an FTP client on the remote machine. By running an FTP client, it is easy to connect to your computer from both Macintosh and Windows based operating systems. All that is required is that you download and install the appropriate client. Penn offers free downloads of these clients:

Using the FTP client, a user must enter the IP address of the machine which they want to connect to into the address field. For help determining the IP address of a Macintosh computer, please visit this link. The user may then login as him or herself and be able to view and modify any of his or her own files, or any files on the Macintosh HD which he or she has permission to view or modify.

To log into your machine using Fetch, do the following:

To log onto your machine using FileZilla, do the following:

Enabling Windows file sharing

Windows file sharing allows you to share documents with users running the Microsoft Windows operating system. This is useful for transfering data over the network between a Mac and a PC.

To access your Mac from a Windows 2000/XP machine, follow these directions:

 Last modified August 23 2007 12:46:52