File sharing and networking in OSX.

Hello all,

I'm still a big newbie when it comes to OSX, especially with the whole networking and file sharing stuff it has to offer... or doesn't offer, I don't know yet. Here's my question:

I want to share an arbitrary folder - NOT the Public folder - on my Desktop. How do I do this? I tried to change the permissions of the folder itself, selecting the option Read & Write for "Groups" and "Others", but nothing happens. All I can see through another iMac when logging in as Guest is the default shared folder located at (Home folder) > Public > DropBox.

I also tried to find a solution through the application NetInfo Manager. I went to users > (Home folder) and modified the property sharedDir from "Public" to "Desktop". No success. I changed it back, don't worry.

Any solutions are more than welcome!

The Guest account might be limited in what it can see. Try creating another user account and see if that makes any difference.

There are a couple of different ways to share folders other than the ones shared by default. You didn't specify if you were wanting to share with Windows or other Macs, this is how you'd do it for Windows:

1) Edit the /etc/smb.conf file, adding the directory you want to share.

2) Download a freeware app called SharePoints which is basically a GUI front-end for editing the smb.conf file. SharePoints also allows you to configure AFS sharing.

Thanks for your replies. I want to share a folder between two Macs, no Windows computers.

I suppose that creating an user account for networking purposes only is also via "Accounts" in System Preferences? Or isn't it the same?

SharePoints will still allow you to do what you want to do. Just use AFP instead of SMB. Might be worth a look.

It works like a charm! Thank you very much!

I wonder why OSX doesn't offer such a GUI by default...

We share three Macs at home using a Ethernet cables and a router and have no problems accessing each others desktops, music folder or any other folder. Is this for a home network or in a work environment?

It's a home network, with a router. Just out of curiosity, how do you share a folder on your network? What's the procedure? This is what the SharePoints description said:

SharePoints is an application or a preference pane that makes it easy to add and delete share points like in the old Finder. In Mac OS X, by default, you are limited to sharing only what is in your public folder in your home directory. This program makes it easy to share any folder.
In addition SharePoints also brings back users and groups management to Mac OS X as well as easy configuration of AppleFileServer (AFS) and Samba (SMB) Server properties.

Click to expand...

As long as you log in with the other Mac's admin password, you're good to go. Since we know each other's passwords in the household, we can mount the other Mac as an external volume and browse as we want. You might also want to look into your System Preferences and look at the Sharing prefs.