Mac OS X Power Hound, Second Edition

File Sharing

The Mac’s file sharing feature revolutionized computer-to-computer networking. It gave Mac fans the power to create folders that were visible to other people on the network with a few simple mouse clicks and without a computer science degree. Mac OS X continues the tradition of easy Mac-to-Mac networking.

Monitoring File-Sharing Activity

If you suspect a hacker is infiltrating your machine, or if you’ve established an FTP server and you’re just curious about who’s using it, you might want to track file-sharing activity. This hint tells you how to turn on Mac OS X’s secret activity monitor.

Open the Terminal, and type cd /Library/Preferences. Changes made here in the global Preferences folder affect the entire system, so you’ll need to use sudo to make the required changes.

Type sudo pico com.apple.AppleFileServer.plist to launch the pico text editor and open the file sharing server’s preferences file—once you enter your administrator password. Just below the first <dict> tag, you’ll see these lines:

<key>activityLog</key>
<false/>

Using the arrow keys on the keyboard, move down to the end of the <false/> line and use the Delete key to erase the word false. Type true, so that the final line reads <true/>, and then hit Control-O to save your changes. When the file name prompt appears, hit Return, and then hit Control-X to exit pico. You’ve just flipped the master switch to turn the activity monitor on.

Now open System Preferences → Sharing → Services tab and turn off Personal ...