Yet another means of sharing a protected folder

Jul 26, '02 09:44:36AM

Contributed by: spursley

To create a directory that can be accessed locally, as well as remotely by another user via AppleTalk (with a password and user name required for the remote user) do the following:

  1. Create a new user.
  2. Restart in System 9.
  3. Delete all of the folders in that user's folder (Desktop, Pictures, and so on). [Editor's aside: You should be able to do this with 'su' in the Terminal without rebooting, but I haven't tested this hint so I'm not sure about that!]
  4. Restart in OS X using your main user account.
Provide the user name and password for this new stripped down user account to the person(s) who need to share this folder. Needless to say, they will also need to know the name of your computer.

Put whatever you wish to share in this stripped user folder.

If you create a new folder or file in this shared directory, the remote users will be able to access them just fine since they are logged in as the owner of that account (files/folders have the owner/group of the folder they are created in).

If you move or copy files to this shared user account from your main user account (or some other user account on your computer), you will need to change their owner and group to match the shared user account or the remote user(s) won't be able to use them.

I use this system to allow students to upload their homework files to my notebook computer, without allowing them to roam around in the rest of my hard drive.

Comments (1)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020726094436403