BeServed - Sharing Your Files with Others

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BeServed - Introduction Getting Started Accessing Files on Another Computer

BeServed - Sharing Your Files with Others

Using the Preferences Application

BeOS and Windows systems support the BeServed File Sharing Preferences application intended to make sharing folders on your computer easy and centralized in one location. This graphical utility has the same capabilities as editing the configuration file manually.

In zeta, you will find the File Sharing preferences application by navigating through your Be menu (the Deskbar) to the "Preferences" item, then locating and selecting "File Sharing." On Windows systems, a program group should have been created in your start menu for BeServed, which contains a shortcut to the preferences application. Navigate through your start menu and select this shortcut.

The preferences application should look relatively similar on all supported systems. Zeta screenshots are provided herein, but other versions of the interface are virtually identical.
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All the folders that are shared on this computer are listed in the main panel. You can share an additional folder by clicking on the New button. You can also edit the properties of an existing shared folder by highlighting it in the list and clicking on the Edit button, or simply double-clicking on it. If you have an existing shared folder that you no longer wish to share, highlight it in the list and click on the Remove button.

When adding a new shared folder, or changing the properties of an existing one, you will use the shared folder properties panel, shown below. This panel allows you to select the folder you wish to share, to choose a friendly name by which others will reference the folder, and to choose the security options that will govern what users who access this folder will be permitted to do.

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Basic access control is provided by the global setting "Users can make changes to files and folders." When this option is enabled, users that access this shared folder are able to add new files or sub-folders, modify the content of existing files, delete files, and change BeOS attributes and indexes. You should only enable this option if the files within your shared folder are not irreplaceable.
Beginning with version 1.2.0, you can optionally define different permission levels for users and groups of users on your network. Users and groups are defined and administered through the BeSure authentication server that comes with BeServed. This is useful if you want some users to have permission to change files, but not all users. It is also useful for requiring users to enter passwords when your computer is connected to the Internet. You may not want any BeServed user on the Internet to find and access your files. Securing your public shared folder is the job of the authentication server.
To grant access to a specific user, you must have a BeSure authentication server on your network, and you must have this computer configured to recognize its authority to administer users. See the documentation on BeSure for more information on setting up security for your BeServed-powered network.
The Domain User Access section of the share properties panel lists the users and groups that have been granted specific permission levels for your shared folder. To specify permission for an additional user or group, click on the Add button. To remove the specific permissions granted to a user or group, highlight the desired one in the list and click on the Remove button. You cannot edit the permission granted to a specific user. If you wish to change the permission level that user is granted, you need to remove the current entry and add the user again, this time with the desired permission level. The Domain Users panel shown below is displayed when assigning specific permission levels to a user or group.

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When you are finished editing the properties of your shared folder(s), click the Save button to write your changes into the configuration file. Note that your changes will not immediately take affect. There may be instances where you do not want to interrupt services to users currently making use of file shares you may have edited or completely removed. When you want to roll your changes out to users, click on the Deploy button.

Using the Configuration File

On systems that do not support the preferences application, you configure a computer to share files by editing the BeServed-Settings script in the shared configuration directory (/boot/home/config/settings).

This script can specify one or more folders you would like to make available to other users on your network. Specifically, the "share" command accepts the folder to be shared and a friendly alias for the folder. The command is written as follows:

share directory as alias

If the directory or alias names contain spaces, you will need to enclose them in quotation marks. Additionally, the command must reside on a single line in the configuration file.

Examples:
share /boot/home as HomeDir
share "/boot/home/My Projects" as "My Projects"
You may leave comments in the file by beginning the line with a # character. For example:
# Share my home directory
share /boot/home as HomeDir

As a minimum security precaution, you can decide whether you want users to be able to merely read your files, or be given permission to modify, rename, and delete them. By default, all shared folders are read-only, meaning that shared files and folders cannot be changed by remote users. To grant access to change files, use the command:

set HomeDir read-write

This command enables remote users to modify, rename, and delete your files. It also allows users to create new files. It should be used carefully.
If you need to have more advanced security, such as the ability to define users and groups of users that will have different access permissions, you will need to us the included BeSure authentication server. You will use the authenticate command and provide the host name or IP address of a computer on your network that will run the BeSure server. This single computer will grant or reject all login attempts to file shares on the network. The authenticate command looks like this:

authenticate with 192.168.0.4

This command instructs the BeServed file server to consult the authentication server to verify a user's credentials before granting access to file shares defined on that server.
Once you have enabled security, you'll need to grant the specific permissions you want each account to have. The currently available permissions are read and write. These permissions are granted to users defined on the BeSure authentication server using the grant command, as in:

grant read on "My Projects" to group everyone
grant read,write on "My Projects" to johndoe

The first command grants read-only access to all users in the standard everyone group (notice the group keyword). The second command grants read and write access to the specific user johndoe.
Be aware that even if users are granted write access on a shared folder using the grant command, you must still specify the share as supporting both reading and writing priveleges using the aforementioned set command and specifying read-write permission. Without enabling this option, all users effectively have read-only access regardless of the permission bestowed upon them by use of the grant command. This enables write access to be globally revoked, such as during a backup operation.
The settings file must be saved as plain text. Be cafeful when using editors that provide formatting, such as StyledEdit or Gobe Productive, that you save the file in plain text format. Otherwise, an editor will insert font, paragraph and other formatting information into the file that BeServed will be unable to interpret.
When you change the settings, you will need to stop and restart the server application. The application is called beserved_server and resides in the /boot/home/config/servers folder. You can force the server to review the changed configuration by sending it the hangup, or HUP, signal in tradtional Unix fashion. The signal is sent using the kill command, as in:

# kill -HUP process_id

where process_id is the process ID of the beserved server.

You can place this command in your startup sequence if you would like to have file sharing automatically enabled upon system startup.

From the command prompt, you may type:

/boot/home/config/servers/beserved_server

Note: The ampersand (&) character is not needed at the end of the line, as in earlier versions of the server. The server now runs as a proper Unix daemon, detaching itself from the controlling terminal. Alternatively, you may open a Tracker window for the /boot/home/config/servers folder and double-click on the beserved_server entry.

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