Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

Figure 21-13. Controlling a remote computer with screen sharing
File Sharing
CHAPTER 21 WORKING WITH REMOTE SERVERS AND NETWORKS 379
When you connect to another machine in the Finder, you are using file sharing. In previous versions
of Mac OS X, different protocols were listed separately. In Leopard, AFP, FTP, and SMB
are all covered by the same service. You can decide which protocols are allowed by clicking the
Options button.
In addition to the protocol list, you can decide which folders you’d like to share and explicitly
list which users should be allowed to connect to your machine. As with screen sharing,
enabling file sharing will make your machine visible on the local network, so make sure you need
it before activating it. Also, SMB requires storing passwords in a less-secure way than Mac OS X
prefers, so make double-sure you need to let people connect to you with SMB before activating it.
Access to folders and files on your machine is determined by the permissions and access lists
you’ve already set up. If you’d like to exchange files with other people on the network without
having to worry about all that stuff, you can use the default Public folder, which is set up automatically
on each new account.
By default, people who connect to your machine can read files from the Public folder, but
they cannot edit or delete them, and they cannot put files in the Public folder itself. Within the
Public folder, there’s a folder called Drop Box, which works in the opposite way. People can put
files in the Drop Box folder, but they cannot open the Drop Box folder to access the files it contains.
If you have a file you want people to access, simply put it in the Public folder. If someone
else needs to give you a file, they can simply drop it in the Drop Box folder. It doesn’t get much
easier than that!