If you’ve been enjoying our Using Apple OS X Lion Server as a Home Server series, then make sure you pick up a copy of the accompanying eBook. You’ll find additional chapters and information on using OS X Lion Server to power your digital home that won’t be available here on the site, and with all of our walkthroughs available in one convenient document (ePub or PDF), it’s far easier to install and configure your server without having to click backward and forwards to the website.
- Introduction
- Choosing Your Hardware
- Features
- Installation
- The Server App
- Storage and Network Configuration
- Users and Groups Configuration
- Profile Manager and Macs [eBook Exclusive]
- Profile Manager and iOS Devices [eBook Exclusive]
- File and Folder Sharing
- Shared Address Book [eBook Exclusive]
- Shared Calendar [eBook Exclusive]
- iChat Server
- Time Machine Backup
- Windows PC Backup [eBook Exclusive]
- VPN Configuration [eBook Exclusive]
- Websites, Blogs and Wikis
In the last two parts of our OS X Lion Server series, we took a detailed look at one of the more advanced aspects of the platform, in the shape of Lion’s Profile Manager. Today, we’re going back to basics with a look at one of the most vital aspects of a server platform – file and folder sharing. For those of you in all Mac households, you’ll quite rightly expect Lion Server file and folder sharing to work out of the box, and (barring any bugs) that’s pretty much what you’ll get. But with many WGS readers running or considering running mixed Mac and PC infrastructures, how well does OS X Lion Server play in that scenario? Let’s find out.
Certainly one of the things that impressed me when I started using Macs was the ease with which OS X is able to discover, connect to and share with other computers around the home – whether they’re other Mac clients, Windows-based client PCs, or indeed Windows Server (or Windows Home Server) machines. The good news is that easy experience extends to OS X Server too, with regard to accessing files and folders on client PCs from the server. Accessing shared folders on Lion Server from non-Mac clients – a reasonably essential and usually straightforward task, one would assume – can incur potentially major headaches.
You may well have heard that Apple made a number of significant changes to support for sharing files and folders with Windows-based PCs – this was due to the company dropping its use of the Samba file sharing suite due to licensing changes and moving to its own implementation of the SMB protocol. At the same time, Apple also revised the version of their AFP file sharing protocol which has led to a devices from Sonos, Synology, Drobo and others to push out firmware updates to maintain support. Without a doubt, the debut implementation of new file sharing protocols are going to create issues, and in the case of Lion Server, unfortunately, they’re fundamental. Mac client to Mac Server? You’re golden. But then try accessing those same shared folders on the server from a PC? Using your previously created Open Directory account credentials? My experience, and reading around, the experience of many others is that up to the current Lion Server version 10.7.1 at least, it can be tricky and unreliable – that’s not to say it’s impossible, and indeed as you’ll see, I managed to access shared folders on Lion Server on a client PC, but it’s a little fussy.
But before we get into the head scratching, let’s take a look at File Sharing between OS X clients and the server.
Sharing Files With Macs
Once you’ve installed Lion Server, you’ll notice a section in the Server app that pertains to File Sharing in the left hand pane. This exposes the necessary controls required to share any folder on the server’s hard drive that you’d like to share with other computers on your network. The first thing to do is to hit that very large switch at the top of the panel to start the File Sharing service. Adding a folder to the list is very easy – simply click the Plus button to open up a file browser window, navigate to the folder you wish to share, and select Choose.
For each folder selected, you have the ability to change access permissions for Groups and Users between Read/Write, Read Only, Write Only or No Access.
To add a different user or group to a folder, double-click the folder (or Share Point in Apple language), then click the plus button. This will create a new blank entry in the Access list, into which you can type a user or select Browse to see a list of all users and groups.
Once selected, click the arrows next to the user or group to set the necessary permissions. Note the controls at the bottom of the panel, which allow/prevent file sharing with different types of device, including Mac clients (using the previously mentioned AFP protocol), Windows PCs (SMB) and your iOS devices (iPhones, iPads using the WebDAV protocol). For security purposes, you may wish to leave guest access to your server folders disabled. Completing the list of options is the ability to use a folder for user’s home directories.
