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.
<screenshot>
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.
<screenshot>
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.
<screenshot>
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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