Tip: Some info on SMB on OS X

440Hz

Was asked this question this evening and thought would share the answer:

[note, I was going to type all of this up myself and then I found that someone else had already written a very fine post about it so I copied and pasted to here, handier to have the full text in this post but here is the link http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?act=ST&f=62&t=222010 for credit]

Setting up Samba (SMB) shares in Os X takes a little more than just turning on Windows File Sharing.

Apple provides no way of setting your shares individually. To do this you need to download SharePoints. SharePoints is a free preferencePane that sits in System Preferences and allows you to make as many SMB and AFS shares as you want. Download SharePoints: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/8658

Next, install the PrefPane, just the prefPane will do, you can ignore the app. Quit System Preferences if its open and reopen it. Look at the bottom of the window and there is SharePoints. Click on it to open it.

The main window area is where the shares are listed, but you dont have any yet. Some setup required...

SET UP SAMBA ON YOUR OS X MACHINE
Click on the last tab at the right that says "SMB Props" and set the right info. "Server NetBios Name" == Computer name, "Workgroup" == Workgroup your pc's or Xbox is on. Leave the rest alone and click "Update Samba (SMB) Server Properties"

Add A Share
Type a share name into the "Share Name" box. This is self explanatory. Now Choose the permissions you want the share to have. Just worry about the Owner permissions and choose r/w (Readable/Writeable). Now click the "Browse" buttton next to "Directory" and choose what directory you want to share. Directly under this are two drop downs, one for enabling AFS and one for enabling SMB. Click on the one for SMB and chose Shared+. Now click the "Create New Share" button and your share will then end up at the top. You now have a share.

Now click on the SHOW ALL icon at the top of the preferences window to get back to the main preferences. Now Click on Sharing and choose Windows Sharing and start it. You are now sharing with Samba.


Edit share.xml

Computer Name: machine_name
Workgroup: group_name
Share Name: share_name

I will now use all this data that i have used to create my share to now add my share to the xbmc XML file.

Scroll down to the Samba section of the XML file. (If you don't have this, upgrade your version of XBMC)

This is what my entry would be:


CODE
<samba>
<workgroup>group_name</workgroup>
<winsserver>-</winsserver>
<debuglevel>0</debuglevel>
</samba>


Just enter the Workgroup, don't worry about the other 2 properties.

You will also need to edit the xml file with the following info:


CODE
<!-- some share details eg a music share !-->
<music>
<default></default>
<bookmark>
<name>randomhead's Music</name>
<path>smb://USER:PASS@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/Music/</path>
</bookmark>
</music>


The important string here is smb://USER:PASS@YOURIPADDRESS/YOURSHARE/

You must use the user name and password combination of the user that is logged into the computer that you are connecting to while your new share is active. Basically, your user name and password. Then enter the IP address of the computer. Then the share name that you created.

Hopefully people will find it useful, I found it to be a very well written guide. No doubt my explanation would not have been so concise!

babypink

deadly biscuits!!

ZENER

Nice one KT. There is another - in my opinion - better way of doing this. In Linux there is an inetd service for editing the smb.conf file, it's called SWAT - SaMBa Web Admin Tool - it's accessed from any web browser on http://localhost:901 and provides a consistent front-end to SaMBa. Apple give a tutorial on this.

You can also use textedit as well but you will need to temporarily change the permissions on the smb.conf file in /etc/smb.conf in order to edit it but it does allow you much more control. You can use Go > Go To Folder from the Finder Menu and enter /etc/smb.conf . A full tutorial on SaMBa is available from www.samba.org.

I did a post on this a couple of years ago with detailed instructions on how to share things like photos and music with Windows users. Older versions of SaMBa were not fully compatible with all versions of windows and there were some registry entries in Windows that had to be edited to disable password encryption. Versions of SaMBa before 2.10 didn't support this. To see if you have a higher version open a console and type:

smbclient -V

you should get

Version 3.0.10

if you are using 10.4

Also to make your Mac a member of the same workgroup as your Windows machines just go to /Applications/Utilities/Directory Access and change the SMB CIFS field to whatever the workgroup name is. Leave the WINS server entry empty unless you know the address of the local master browser.

ZEN

440Hz

Lovely ZEN! Great to have more options, cheers for posting that.