Home Networking: The Missing Manual

Sharing Your Mac's Files and Folders

So far, you've accomplished two tasks: naming your computer and creating user accounts. Now, it's time to tell your Mac that it should start sharing its files and folders with visitors who arrive from across the network. Once you've done that, you can decide exactly what documents everyone should be able to view and what they can do with those files. For example, should your husband have access to your work files and, if so, should he just be able to see the files or should he be able to make changes to them, too?

The steps you take depend on whether you're running Mac OS X or Mac OS 9. Each operating system is covered separately in the following sections.

File Sharing in Mac OS X

Once you establish accounts for everybody who might want to get into your Mac OS X computer—even if the only account is yours—you're ready to proceed with preparing the machine for access from elsewhere on the network.

Note

You need to be logged in as an administrator (Section 6.2.2) to activate file sharing.

1. Open System Preferences.

   Click its icon on the Dock or choose

   

   → System Preferences. Either way, the System Preferences program opens.

2. Click the Sharing icon.

   The Sharing panel appears, as shown in Figure 6-5.

3. In the list of checkboxes, turn on Personal File Sharing (Figure 6-5).

   This feature takes a moment to warm up; when File Sharing is finally on, the button says Stop. ...