BeServed - Accessing Files on Another Computer

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BeServed - Introduction Getting Started Sharing Your Files with Others

BeServed - Accessing Files on Another Computer

Using the My Network Application

The My Network application is installed by default into your applications folder. It is used to view the computers on your network that are sharing their files using BeServed.

To access the files on a remote computer, launch the My Network application by double-clicking the icon in the applications folder. When the program appears, you should see a list of the other computers on your network running the BeServed server. If you do not see the computer(s) you expect, make sure it is running the server application described in Sharing Your Files with Others.

Once you find the computer you're looking for, double-click its entry in the list to display the list of shared folders that computer is making available. If you do not see the shared folder you are looking for, check the settings on the remote computer to ensure it is properly configured to share its files.

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The My Network application is shown above. Several remote computers are displayed. One computer is displayed with a fully qualified domain name, others have simple host names, and one computer is shown with an IP address only. The address is shown when a host name cannot be determined by consulting a DNS server or the local /etc/hosts file.

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Double-clicking on a specific computer opens another window displaying the folders that are shared on that computer. The window above shows a single shared folder called Linux Home Folders.
Once you have the shared folder you're looking for, double-click on it. That folder will open in a Tracker window just as though the files were local to your machine. At this point, you can browse through the remote file share using Tracker or the command terminal. Aside from performance, it should be transparent that you are accessing files on another computer.
If the remote computer has been configured to authenticate users against the BeSure authentication server, you will be prompted for a user name and password before being allowed to work with any of the files, and consequently, before the Tracker window appears.

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You can obtain information on any of the computers listed in the MyNetwork window, including other names (aliases) that computer can be referenced by, the IP address(es) of the computer, the type of hardware platform, the operating system, and number of active connections. To view this information on a computer in the list, simply highlight the desired computer, then click the About this Computer button.

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Using Terminal

You can also find computers and mount remote shared folders from the command line. Two programs, lshosts and mounthost are provided for that purpose. Both are installed in the BeOS shared bin folder (typically /boot/home/config/bin), and should consequently be in your path.

To obtain a list of computers on your network running the BeServed server application, type
lshosts

on the command line and press Enter. A list of computers will be displayed by their network host name. The computers are listed in the order they respond to your query. To view the shared folders exported on any host, simply append the host name to the lshost command. For example, to view the shared folders on a remote computer named "beos" you would type

lshosts beos
To mount a shared folder to a folder on your local computer, you use the mounthost command. The syntax of this command is:

mounthost [-t] host:shared_folder [on] path

Example:
mounthost beos:BootDir /boot/home/bootdir

The -t option is used only when the server you access requires authentication. Normally, you will receive a simple prompt at the terminal window asking for your user name, then your password. However, if you are using the mounthost command from within a shell script, you may not have a terminal window in which to type. In this case, using the -t option displays the Tracker login panel displayed above.

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