How to share files on your Windows network

Homegroups make sharing files and folders easy on Windows 7, but Windows XP and Vista users have to do things a little differently. Fortunately, there are dead-simple ways to share files on both XP and Vista, too.

Microsoft offers a very detailed step-by-step guide for those of you looking for an exhaustive walkthrough, but here's the short version for Windows XP users:

• click Start > Run, type control folders, and press enter
• click the View tab, and scroll down to the bottom of the list box
• place a check next to use simple file sharing and then click OK
• open My Computer and browse to a folder you want to share
• right-click the folder and choose sharing and security
• click the warning text ("If you understand the security risks...") then click Just enable file sharing
• check Share this folder on the network and give your share a name (it doesn't have to match the folder name)
• if you want to allow others to edit, delete, and add new files, check the Allow box as well
• click OK, and you're done!

Any system on your network should now have access to the shared folder on your XP system. Now, let's move on to Vista.
Again, Microsoft offers a very thorough walkthrough of the sharing process on Windows Vista. But Vista introduced a new feature designed to make sharing a bit easier than it was in XP -- Public Folders. While they're not quite as flexible a sharing option as Windows 7 homegroups, Vista's Public Folders are easy to configure and use.

• click the Windows button and type sharing, then click Advanced sharing settings when it appears
• under Home or Work, scroll down to Public folder sharing
• click the radio button next to Turn on sharing...

The C:\Users\Public\ directory is now shared, and other users can now view and modify folders and files located inside. If you want to keep people from making changes, you'll need to do the following:

• open Computer and browse to C:\Users, right-click Public, and choose properties.
• click the Security tab, then click the Edit button
• click Everyone, then uncheck Full control, Modify, and Write under Permissions for Everyone

Any files or folders you want to share can now simply be dropped into the Public folder for easy access.

It's always a good idea to get acquainted with the more advanced sharing options -- including password-protected sharing. If you're interested in setting up tighter controls, visit Microsoft and check out this post for Windows XP and this one for Vista.

Tags: file sharing, files, FileSharing, folder, folders, how-to, howto, microsoft, sharing, tips, vista, windows, windows vista, windows xp, WindowsVista, WindowsXp

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The easiest way to set up Samba for file-sharing | Linux and Open Source

Samba, Apache, and MySQL are probably the biggest open source projects found on Linux (aside from the Linux kernel itself, of course). All three have really elevated Linux for use in home networks and corporate environments.

With them, anyone can have a file and print server, a Web server, or a database. All three come with pretty much every Linux distribution you can find.

The most ubiquitous of the three is probably Samba, because it and the functionality it provides is found in every operating system. Linux, OS X, the BSDs and others use Samba. It is directly compatible with Windows because it uses the Windows file and print sharing protocols to allow for sharing Windows file systems on Linux and vice versa.

Samba allows for a lot of configuration, and there are many options to use — primarily relating to authentication. When Samba 4 finally lands, it will be an incredible release with Active Directory support and being able to act as an Active Directory server, with internal LDAP and Kerberos servers to fully flesh out what is necessary for full integration with Windows networks. Until then, you can still hack Samba up to do a lot of these things, and it works fantastic as a client in Windows networks. You can make Samba work with Active Directory, with LDAP, and with local passwords.

Most people will just want a stand-alone Samba server somewhere on their network and that is the easiest to set up. To begin with, you need Samba installed on your system. This can be done by installing the “samba” or “samba3″ (on some distributions) package, either using yum or apt-get or whatever mechanism your distribution uses to install packages. Once Samba is installed, edit the /etc/samba/smb.conf file. If you’re using Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora, you will need to make further changes if you have SELinux support enabled; the comments in smb.conf will help with the additional steps.

A very basic smb.conf file will look like this:

 [global]

    workgroup = MYGROUP

    server string = Samba Server Version %v

    log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m

    max log size = 50

    security = user

    passdb = tdbsam

[homes]

    comment = Home Directories

    browseable =no

    writable = yes

This is an absolutely basic configuration file. If you already have a workgroup defined, change the “workgroup” value to whatever you have already defined for the network. The rest can remain as-is. This will allow you the ability to connect to the server and mount your home directory on the server from any other machine on the network.

The next step is to create the local passwords. Because Samba does not use the authentication credentials of the system (i.e., via PAM), you need to add the user to the Samba user database:

# smbpasswd -a user

Provide the password for the user in question. Also note that this user must also exist on the system, so if this is a new user you must use useradd to create the user and passwd to set their password. If the user already exists on the server, there is no need to do anything more than set their Samba password.

Once this is all complete, start the Samba server (or restart it):

# service smb start

Now, from another system, you can use smbclient to list available shares:

% smbclient -L \\server.myhost.com

Password:

Domain=[CERBERUS] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.5.4-62.fc13]

       Sharename       Type      Comment

       ---------       ----      -------

       IPC$            IPC       IPC Service (Samba Server Version 3.5.4-62.fc13)

       user            Disk      Home Directories

Domain=[CERBERUS] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.5.4-62.fc13]

       Server               Comment

       ---------            -------

       Workgroup            Master

       ---------            -------

To mount the share, connect to \\server.myhost.com\user using the network browser in GNOME, the Finder in OS X, or Windows Explorer in Windows.

This is the easiest way to set up Samba for file sharing. Other mechanisms exist for sharing files on a LAN, such as NFS or SSHFS, but Samba is quick, easy to set up, and reliable. It is also cross-platform, making it easy to share files amongst various operating systems.

Get the PDF version of this tip here.

via blogs.techrepublic.com.com

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How to Share a Folder from OS X to Windows

Today we will look at sharing a folder on your Mac with a windows machine. This is a handy feature when trying to collaborate with others or if you are using an older Mac as a file / media server.

If you’re new to OS X and have a home or small office network that includes Windows machines, you might want to share files between them. We have already shown you how to Mount a Windows Share on your Mac. But what if you want to do it the other way around? Here we’ll take a quick look at how easy it is to set up and share a folder in OS X with Windows.

To start you need to open the Sharing preference pane in System Preferences.

 

Once you are in there select on the File Sharing option.

Then you will want to click on the “+” underneath the Shared Folders column.

Then choose the folder you want to share. In this example we will use cwelker’s Documents folder.

Next click the Options… button. In order be able to see the files from the Windows, machine you will need to click to the Share files and folder using SMB (Windows) option, Also you will want to choose the users accounts who can access the files.

Now you will be able to access your files from the Windows machine. If you need assistance with mapping a network drive in Windows check out Mysticgeek’s article Map a Network Drive from XP to Windows 7.

via howtogeek.com

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