Mac OS X in a Nutshell

Running Services in Mac OS X

Like so many other administrative tasks in Mac OS X, you have two ways to run the network services. The classic Unix way involves invoking the daemon on the command line, either manually through the Terminal or with a script. The Sharing preference pane, though, provides a very simple on/off switch for many network services.

Running Services Through the Sharing Pane

The Sharing pane contains three tabbed panes shown in Figure 13-1.

Figure 13-1. The Sharing preference panel’s Services pane

Services

Lists several service daemons that you can control.

Firewall

Contains controls for the system’s built-in firewall. (See Section 11.4.2.)

Internet

Lets you enable/disable Internet sharing.

Every item in the Services list is visually paired with an On checkbox and is (behind the scenes) associated with a daemon program. Generally, when you check a checkbox, the related daemon launches; unchecking the checkbox kills the daemon, making the service unavailable. In some cases, the system service remains running in either state, but toggling the checkbox causes the system to rewrite its configuration file and then restart it.

Personal File Sharing

When active, other computers can mount disks and folders on your filesystem via AFP. See Section 13.7, later in this chapter.

Windows File Sharing

The same as Personal file sharing, but uses the SMB protocol to share disks and ...