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Using the Preferences Application |
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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 BeOS, 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.
BeOS screenshots are provided herein, but other versions of the interface are
virtually identical.

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.

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.

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.
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Using the Configuration File |
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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
If you need to enable security using the 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.
The settings file must be saved as a 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. Refer to your BeOS
documentation for information on editing startup scripts.
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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