Mac OS X Unleashed

By John Ray and William C. Ray

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • Part I: Introduction to Mac OS X
  • Chapter 1. Mac OS X Component Architecture
  • Chapter 2. Installing Mac OS X
  • Chapter 3. Mac OS X Basics
  • Chapter 4. The Finder: Working with Files and Applications
  • Chapter 5. Running Classic Mac OS Applications
  • Part II: Inside Mac OS X
  • Chapter 6. Native Utilities and Applications
  • Chapter 7. Internet Communications
  • Chapter 8. Installing Third-Party Applications
  • Part III: User-Level OS X Configuration
  • Chapter 9. Network Setup
  • Chapter 10. Printer and Font Management
  • Chapter 11. Additional System Components
  • Part IV: Introduction to BSD Applications
  • Chapter 12. Introducing the BSD Subsystem
  • Chapter 13. Common Unix Shell Commands: File Operations
  • Part V: Advanced Command-Line Concepts
  • Chapter 14. Advanced Shell Concepts and Commands
  • Chapter 15. Command-Line Applications and Application Suites
  • Chapter 16. Command-Line Software Installation
  • Chapter 17. Troubleshooting Software Installs, and Compiling and Debugging Manually
  • Chapter 18. Advanced Unix Shell Use: Configuration and Programming (Shell Scripting)
  • Part VI: Server/Network Administration
  • Chapter 19. X Window System Applications
  • Chapter 20. Command-Line Configuration and Administration
  • Chapter 21. AppleScript
  • Chapter 22. Perl Scripting and SQL Connectivity
  • Chapter 23. File and Resource Sharing with NetInfo
  • Chapter 24. User Management and Machine Clustering
  • Chapter 25. FTP Serving
  • Chapter 26. Remote Access and Administration
  • Chapter 27. Web Serving
  • Part VII: Server Health
  • Chapter 28. Web Programming
  • Chapter 29. Creating a Mail Server
  • Chapter 30. Accessing and Serving a Windows Network
    • SMB and CIFS
    • Samba
    • Mac OS X 10.1 SMB/CIFS Client
    • Sharity
    • Sharity Application Configuration
    • Summary
  • Chapter 31. Server Security and Advanced Network Configuration
  • Chapter 32. System Maintenance
  • Appendix A. Command-Line Reference
  • Appendix B. Administration Reference

Sharity Application Configuration

The Sharity application offers additional configuration options beyond what you can do simply by browsing your network. You might need to adjust these settings if you're part of a large Windows network, or want greater control over when and how shares are mounted.

To access the advanced configuration, open the Sharity application, and then choose Configuration from the Configuration menu. There are seven different panes for setting up Sharity and two different access modes: Expert and Novice. Novice mode disables some of the available settings. Let's take a look at each of the screens and its purpose. Click between the available configuration panes by clicking its name from the list on the far left of the Sharity Configuration window. Let's start by looking at the Sharity Mounts pane.

Sharity Mounts

Using the Sharity Mounts pane, as shown in Figure 30.21, the Sharity user can manually mount additional browsers or shares on the Mac OS X computer.

Figure 30.21 Sharity Mounts configures and stores mounted drives manually.

Sharity mounts displays a list of mounted volumes on the right side of the screen. The list has five columns showing information about the resource:

• Mountpoint— The Mac OS X path where the resource is mounted.
• Owner— The user that mounted the volume.
• Module— The module that the mount uses. There are two possibilities: cifsBrowse, which enables browsing of the SMB/CIFS network, and cifsFile for mounting remote file systems.
• Mounted Object— The Windows share path for the mounted resource. In the case of a cifsBrowse module, this is the name of the browser, as defined in CIFS Browsers.
• State— The status of the mount, represented as a combination of (M)ounted, (A)utomounted through the CIFS browser, (R)ead-Only, or (S)tored.

Shares can be selected from the list and acted on by clicking the buttons at the bottom of the screen. Unmount disconnects from the selected share. Store saves a share so that it automatically mounts when Sharity starts at login time. Delete Stored, conversely, removes Stored status from the chosen Share.

To manually add a new volume mount, click the Mount button. A mount sheet will slide down from the top of the window, as shown in Figure 30.22.

Figure 30.22 Click Mount to manually mount a shared resource.

Fill in the information necessary to create the mount. The Mountpoint and Mounted Object fields are usually all that should be changed:

• Mountpoint— The path where the shared resource will be mounted. If this is confusing, please read Chapter 23 for more information.
• Frontend module— The nfs2 module is used for all mounts. This is not changeable.
• Mounted Object— The Windows share path. This can include an IP address in addition to a NetBIOS name. If mounting another browser, use the browser name, as defined in the CIFS Browsers pane.
• Backend Module— Choose cifsFile to mount windows shares, or cifsBrowse to create another CIFS browser.
• Mount read-only— Mount the resource read-only.

Click OK to mount the resource and add it to the Sharity Mounts list.

Sharity Logins

The Sharity Logins screen is similar to the Mounts screen. It provides a quick view of the servers that you are currently logged in to, and enables you to log in to additional servers. Figure 30.23 shows the CIFS Logins pane.

Figure 30.23 Use the CIFS Logins screen to log in and out of servers.

The currently mounted servers are listed, with information about the connection and the user account used:

• Server— The NetBIOS name of the remote server that the user is connected to.
• Local User— The local Mac OS X user that created the connection.
• Remote User— The remote username used to log in to the server.
• State— The state of the connection: (L)ogged in or (S)tored.

Use the buttons at the bottom of the window to Logout of a selected server, Store the connection information, or Delete Stored information. Clicking the Login button will open a sheet containing a list of the servers available for login. Selecting a server from the list will attempt to log in to the server in exactly the same manner as double-clicking it from the browser.

CIFS Browsers

By default, Sharity sets up a single CIFS Browser called browser. It is then mounted at /Network/CIFS and can be used for graphically browsing network resources. Using the CIFS Browsers pane, seen in Figure 30.24, you can create additional browsers that are specific to a workgroup.

Figure 30.24 Configure additional network browsers using CIFS Browsers.

A list of available browsers is located at the left side of the panel, although the configuration options for the selected browser are on the right. Use the Add and Delete buttons at the bottom of the screen to add or remove browsers from the list of available browser configurations.

Edit the selected browser by setting the options on the right:

• Browser's Domain— The workgroup name that the browser should operate in.
• Automount Path— The path where automatically mounted volumes are placed. This should not be changed.
• Auto-Unmount Timeout— The amount of time (in seconds) after which a mount will be automatically unmounted.
• Show List of Domains— Adds the Entire_Network object to a mounted browser for viewing additional workgroups.
• Show Admin Shares— Lists Windows administrative shares along with regular shares.
• Add Explicitly Configured Servers— Adds servers manually configured in the CIFS Servers pane to the browser.
• List Mounted Servers Only— Disables browsing, but retains automount capability. This is not normally needed.
• Mount With Frontend— nfs2 is the only available option.
• NFS Retries— Number of retries a mount attempt will make. The default -1 value means retry forever.
• NFS Initial Timeout— The initial timeout period before a retry is started.
• NFS Kernel Attribute Cache Time— The length of time the operating system kernel will cache file system information.
• NFS File-Handle Lookup Strategy— Determines the method the NFS front end will use to store file identifiers.

Click OK to save the settings, or Revert to reset the options to their defaults.

CIFS Servers

Like the CIFS Browsers pane, the Servers configuration enables you to explicitly configure servers that will then be listed in the browser. This is useful when adding servers to the CIFS browser that aren't normally seen automatically. The CIFS Servers pane is seen in Figure 30.25.

Figure 30.25 Manually set up servers that can't be browsed directly.

Like the previous panel, the CIFS servers are listed along the left side of the window, although the configuration options for the selected item are shown on the right. Use the Add and Delete buttons to create and remove new servers in the list.

Each server is defined with the following information:

• Connect on Port— The SMB/CIFS TCP/IP port to use. The default is 139.
• Server's IP Address— The IP address of the remote server.
• CIFS Connect Timeout— The timeout (in seconds) for the connection process.
• CIFS Request Timeout— The timeout (in seconds) for a server request to be completed after the initial connection.
• Remote Guest User Name— A guest user name that should be used for logging in to the server, regardless of the Mac OS X user logged in.
• Guest User's Password— The password for the Remote Guest user.
• Take Execute Permission From— CIFS permissions are mapped directly from DOS file attributes. Unfortunately, DOS attributes do not include an execute bit. This setting determines which DOS attribute is equivalent to execute on the Mac OS X side. If necessary, you can choose to turn execute permissions Always On or Always Off.
• Invert Execution Permission— Inverts the DOS attribute that the execution permission is mapped from.
• Case Mapping— Enables mapping remote filenames to all uppercase, lowercase, or as-is.
• Enable faked Symbolic Links— Enables faked symbolic links on a mounted server.
• NFS Options— The NFS options are identical to those defined in the CIFS Browsers pane.

Click OK to save the settings, Revert to return to the original configuration, or Defaults to set up the current Server using the Sharity defaults.

CIFS General

Things begin to thin out a bit with the CIFS General panel. These settings can override the initial Domain and WINS server that were configured during the first Sharity run. The CIFS General pane is displayed in Figure 30.26.

Figure 30.26 Set the default workgroup and WINS server for Sharity.

Fill in the following information to set WINS and NetBIOS defaults:

• Default Domain— The default workgroup that Sharity should join.
• WINS Server— The name or IP address of a WINS server.
• Scope-ID— Scopes limit the viewable resources on a network. If your network is configured to use scopes, enter the Scope-ID in this field. This is not likely to be necessary.
• NetBIOS NS Initial Timeout— The initial timeout (in seconds) that Sharity will wait for a response from a WINS server before resending the request.
• NetBIOS NS Maximum Timeout— The maximum amount of time to wait for a WINS reply. If the server does not respond in this amount of time, DNS is used to resolve the name.
• Enable NetBIOS Name Lookups— Enables WINS resolution.
• Enable DNS Name Lookups— Enables DNS resolution of NetBIOS names.

Click OK to save the settings, Revert to return to the original configuration, or Defaults to set up the current server using the Sharity defaults.

Sharity License

If you purchase a license for Sharity, enter it in this pane. There are no other configuration options available on this screen.

Sharity General

Use the Sharity General pane to set up character mapping between Mac OS X and the remote Windows server. If you are logged in as root, you can also choose whether Mac OS X users can alter the Sharity set up. Figure 30.27 displays the Sharity General configuration pane.

Figure 30.27 A few more settings and we're done.

The Sharity general settings control the mapping of characters between Mac OS X and Windows as well as the ability to store passwords for mounted volumes:

• Server Side Character Map— Defines the character mapping used by the remote server. By default, Sharity attempts to use Unicode names, so this is rarely needed in modern (NT/2000) environments.
• Client-Side Character Map— The client-side character mapping. NFS does not use Unicode, so this must be defined properly. Mac OS X users should use the default, UTF-8.
• Users May Change Configuration— The option can be set only by root. It enables any Mac OS X user to alter the Sharity configuration.
• Users May Store Passwords and Mounts— If unchecked, users will not be able to store passwords or mounts. This might be necessary to ensure network security in strict environments.

Click OK to save the settings, Revert to return to the original configuration, or Defaults to set up the current server using the Sharity defaults.

Sharity provides excellent Mac OS X integration and compatibility with existing Windows networks. Although there are bound to be additional players in the PC interoperability arena, Sharity, being a native Cocoa application, is likely to lead the pack.

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