Limit accesability to Networked External Drives?

[Pigumon]

I have some movie files on a networked hard drive for my parents, but I'd rather they not riffle through the rest of the drive.

I have aliases for the movies in their computer's movie folder. But when they click, it asks to connect to the drive and then the whole disk is mounted allowing access to everything like.. say.. text files containing a list of their Christmas gifts.

Anyway, any suggestions on how to limit access to a certain folder?

Thanks

 

[spork183]

Do they connect through sharing on your computer? If so, you can apply the same sharing privileges that apply to your computer, to the drive connected to it, through the sharing preferences panel.

 

[danny_w]

If they share through your computer then you can share just the folder, not the entire drive.

 

[Pigumon]

Well I have an AGP G4 tower with a firewire drive hooked up to it. I'm able to access the G4 and the Drive from any computer.

I have to click on the G4 on the Network icon, enter the password, then select the external drive to mount. Then I have full access to the drive. But I don't want that for my parents.

They're using a macbook and frontrow to access the movies. I have an alias of the movie folder in their macbook's movie folder. They show up no prob in front row that way.

The problem is, I have to go over and type in my password to mount the external drive in order for front row to be able to access the files.

But how do I share just that one folder on the Ext.Drive?

 

[Pigumon]

Found a tidy solution

http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/

I ran this app, selected the one folder I wanted to share, and now this folder is accessible by Guests without a password.

They also have an automounter available.

The one thing I don't like is if you close a movie and unmount the folder, if you try to resume the movie, it just gives a reference error rather than trying to reconnect to the folder.

 

[danny_w]

If you are running Leopard, then in System Preferences->Sharing, click File Sharing in the left pane and a Shared Folders pane shows up. Click the + sign to add folders and/or drives that you want to share. You can share the whole drive or just a single folder from that drive. It is similar in Tiger, but I don't remember exactly.

 

[Pigumon]

My G4 "server" is still Panther, my 3 others are in Tiger mode waiting for Snow Leopard... My parents computer is Leopard though, I guess that explains why that shareware app is not available for Leopard (if it's built-in to the system).

I was thinking about using a hacked apple tv as a server.. it's claimed to be a 1gHz intel as opposed to my current 350mHz PPC...

anyway, thanks for your help, if you remember how to set it up in Tiger, please post.