In this lesson, we're going to talk about sharing printers and file shares out on the network with
your Mac server, so you actually do this without having to even have 10 server on your machine.
So this will work on any client, Mac, but it's especially suited to an Austin server, because what
we've done up to this point, we've created a directory structure, we've got users, we've got groups,
we have a static IP address.
So all those things are in place to make this a much more stable environment for sharing our data.
Even if I was doing this on a client machine, it would be probably for the best if it was a static
IP address, just best practices.
But anyway, so we'll go ahead and get started here.
The first thing I'm going to do is I connected some attach storage here and I started creating some
folders here and I'm going to create a folder that everyone in the accounting group is going to be able
to access.
So I'm just going to go in here.
I'm going to hit new folder and I'm just going to call this accounting.
This will be the accounting group folder group Drive.
And that way everyone who works in the accounting group can access the data.
Anyone who's not in the accounting group is not going to have access.
We don't really want just anyone to be able to get in and take a look at all the invoices and and other
sensitive information that the accounting group may have access to unless you they work in the accounting
department.
So once we've done that, I'm just going to go ahead and close that out.
I'm going to go up here to system preferences and I'm going to go to sharing.
So you've probably remember this from an earlier lesson, but this is the sharing system preference,
and right now file sharing is turned off.
I'm going to go ahead and check the box, turn it on.
And you can see here it has this computer administrators and volumes and here's the IP address, that
specific IP address that we had set, and we're going to go in here and just hit the plus next to the
shared folder.
And I'm going to browse to the folder I created called Accounting, and we're going to go ahead and
add that now when I'm done that you can see I've got a few things that are just on here by default.
So these are all local groups and local users.
I've got the dummy user, which is a user.
I'm logged in as currently.
I'm a member of the staff group like anyone else who logs into the server directly and the everyone
group, which is everyone who logs into the server directly.
So I don't really need to worry about these permissions specifically because I'm really sharing this
out on the network through open directory.
So what I actually need to add is add my users or add my groups to the from the open directory group
to this.
So I'm looking for those network accounts.
So I'm just going to hit plus.
And you can see when I do that starts with local, the local groups here and local users.
Then I have my what's new, which would be my network users and network groups.
So if you're doing this on a Mac client that isn't part of open directory, it isn't bound to a directory.
All you're going to see here is users and groups and contacts.
But because we're we're on this server, we're running our our network open directory, I have network
users and network groups.
So as I mentioned in the past, the best thing to do is probably assign this to a group rather than
trying to assign this to specific users, unless there's a reason for that.
And you can see our four network users are listed here.
We're going to go to network groups and I mentioned this for the accounting department.
So we only want the accounting department to have access.
So hit select to that.
And now I've got the accounting department as a group and I can choose what I want them to be able to
do.
So I actually want them to have read and write access.
You can see read only, write only and read and write are my options.
So I'm going to choose, read and write.
And now what I've done is I've created a share that the accounting department can read and write.
And I can still access this folder on my server, so these local accounts, I'm fine to leave those
in place and you can see, in fact, if I go in.
Browse to this, you'll see I can still access it, you can see here now it says it's a shared folder,
so it's letting me know, hey, this is shared out on the network, but I can create a folder in here.
It's a test and all that kind of stuff.
That folder would then be available out on the network in that account and share people would map it
just by putting this in one nine two one six eight one nine counting.
So that's how you would access that.
Or you can just punch that in on a Mac client, little impromptu to choose one of the shares that you
have access to once you've authenticated.
But the reason I wanted to show this was if I go in here and change this to something like, let's say
write only and let me refresh the screen here.
You'll see something's changed.
I can't see inside this anymore, logged in locally and my icon of change to this right, only Dropbox's
kind of icon.
And that's because I modified the permissions for the local account and the local group.
So I can even say I'll go back to read and write was what I had for and I can change everyone to access.
And now when I go here, browse.
You can see accounting now, I can't get into it at all, and I've got the little red dash saying I
don't have access.
So if you need access, if users are logging in directly to your server, need access to these folders,
they should have those those permissions set as necessary here.
So you can see you've got your local accounts, you've got your network accounts, and they're kind
of mixed together.
So that can create some confusion.
So that's a reason why I highlight that here.
Is that really when you're talking about shares, you really want to be dealing with your network groups,
network users and kind of ignore and just let these stay as default.
If you've got a secure server where maybe you're the only administrator that's logging in and you want
access to all the folders anyways.
All right, next, let's talk about printer sharing.
So I'm going to go to the printers and scanners, some preference, and I'm going to show you that I
actually have a printer set up here and it's a network printer and it is called the admin printer,
and it's in our accounting office.
And I want to share this printer out so I can do a couple of things.
I can check the boxes to share this printer on the network and I can open up sharing preferences here.
But I'm just going to go directly to the sharing preferences and we go to printer sharing.
And I'm going to hit and I've got a button here to take me back to prison scanners if I want to add
printers.
But I'm just going to go ahead and check this box and I'll sharing is on.
I've got everyone set to print and I'm going to hit plus and I'm going to again look at those network
groups and I'm going to change this to the accounting department.
I'm going to add that and then the access to the program.
Now it's shared to those users as well.
And I'm going to say can print as well.
So I want to limit access to those things I can.
So right now, this is available for everyone to print to and like I did before, I go in here and change
it to accounting department.
And now everyone has no access, but the accounting department has the ability to print.
So that's how you can share and manage the permissions of your partners out on your network.
I typically, unless there's a real secure need for it, I tend to just keep the default of everyone
can print.
Each of my partners that I have shared makes that easier.
And it provides a backup.
If a printer in one area, let's say, is jammed or is out of service for some reason, then there's
an easy way to connect all the users to a backup for.