Welcome to the Macintosh Corner March 2005 Edition

In this month edition we have a few tips to help you access your MacOS X remotely.

The first step is to setup ssh access in your computer. Go to the "System Preferences" and then to the "Sharing" control panel and enable "Remote Login". Once you have completed this step you have SSH access to your computer.

To view your computer you can use the handy command "screencapture". The screencapture command is bult-in and found on all OS X machines. Once you login to your computer using an ssh client from the remote computer you type:
    screencapture thefilename.pdf
This command will take a picture of the screen and save it to the PDF file named thefilename.pdf. Now you can use the command scp "secure copy" to tranfer the file and view it. You could also just copy the file to your web server and view the file using a web browser. To turn on the web server in your machine go to the "System Preferences" and then to the "Sharing" control panel and enable "Personal Web Sharing". To copy the file to your web server folder use the following command:
    cp thefilename.pdf ~/Library/Sites/thefilename.pdf
Notice you could also have used screencapture ~/Library/Sites/thefilename.pdf. To view the file open a web browser and type the IP address of your computer followed by "/thefilename.pdf".

With your web server running you can copy any file you may need to your "Sites" folder just like we did with the pdf screen capture and download it using the browser.
If you need to get a file quick from your computer we have just seen how to do it using MacOS X built-in web server yet MacOS X offers other ways to get a file.

While you where activating the "Remote Login" and the "Personal Web Sharing" options you may have noticed an option called "FTP Access". When you enable this option you can navigate your computer using any FTP client program including any MacOS X and Windows XP which have built-in support for FTP.

And last MacOS X has and incredible command called osascript. The osascript command allows you to run Apple Scripts commands from the command line and thus controlling everything in your computer. alsowebpage contains a series of resources for MacOS X users. We will cover osascript in a future edition.

Networking with PC workstations:

Connect to a PC:

MacOS X comes with built in support to connect to Windows workstations sharing files using SMB over TCP/IP or NetBIOS. To connect to a PC just go to the GO menu in the FINDER and select CONNECT TO SERVER. In the address box type: SMB//IP ADDRESS. A dialog will popup prompting you to authenticate. At this point enter a valid user name and password (as created on the PC). Then select the share that you would like to mount. Now you will see a new volume (Hard drive icon) on you desktop or in your computer window.

Setting the SMB Workgroup of your computer:

To be able to connect and share files easier you must change your SMB workgroup name in your computer. The default one is WORKGROUP. To change the default workgroup go to APPLICATIONS/UTILITIES and open the DIRECTORY ACCESS application. Click the little pad lock at the bottom of the screen to authenticate else you will not be able to make changes. In this window select the SMB service and click CONFIGURE. In the box type the name of your workgroup (is uppercase). Close DIRECTORY ACCESS. If you are sharing your files with window user you must restart the SMB service. To do this open the SYSTEM PREFERENCES select the SHARING panel and STOP/START the WINDOWS FILE SHARING OPTION.

Sharing files with Windows user:

The first step is to enable WINDOWS FILE SHARING. You do this open the SYSTEM PREFERENCES select the SHARING panel and "check" the WINDOWS FILE SHARING OPTION, MacOS X will start the service for you.

The second step is to enable user accounts in your machine to login from a PC. By default this option is off. In the SYSTEM PREFERENCES select the ACCOUNTS panel. Select your account from the list and click EDIT USER. In this dialog make sure that the ALLOW USER TO LOG FROM WINDOWS checkbox is marked.

If you have not set the WORKGROUP of your computer this is the time to do so. See the section "Setting the SMB Workgroup".

The current version of MacOS X only supports on SHARE which is the HOME folder of the user that logins to your computer no guest access is enabled. Users know can login by two ways. In a PC user can go to My Network Places, then click on VIEW WORKGROUP COMPUTER and they will see your computer all they have to do is double click on it, the login dialog will open and their are in. Only an user with an account in your MacOS X computer will be able to login (this if you enabled the ALLOW USER TO LOG FROM WINDOWS like mentioned before). The second way they can connect to your computer is by typing \\YourIPAddress in the address bar of any explorer window . They can also type \\computername.

If you want to be able to share more than just a user's home directory there is a quick solution. Since the Apple SMB client is a full implementation of SAMBA all we need is a nice tool to edit the samba configuration files. But everything in Mac is very Mac like and we don not want to edit files the Unix way, so a few guys pick up the bill and developed a Preference Panel for SAMBA called SAMBA Client. This great utility developed by Micha Kersloot (micha@kovoks.nl) and Derk-Jan Hartmans adds a panel in your system preferences to edit SAMBA, just beautiful. This great utility evens adds WinPopUp functionality so you can receive and send WinPopUp messages to any computer in your workgroup. You can download this great tool at http://xamba.sourceforge.net/ssp/index.shtml .

While you are downloading the SAMBA preference panel you may wanna try Gordon Shukwit SAMBA Browse, a nice utility to wonder around the SMB network. Download this tool at http://shukwit.com/main.php. By the way all of these tools are either BSD or GPL licences meaning they are free.

Networking with Unix workstations:

Just in case you do not know much about MacOS X, MacOS X is just another Unix Operating System. Everything you can expect from an Unix OS and I mean everything will work in MacOS X. BTW download Apple's X11 port and you would see what I mean.

Sharing with other Unix users:

By default Apple will disable many of the services available in a Unix system so the first step will be to enable these services. Open the SYSTEM PREFERENCES and select the SHARING panel. In the SERVICES tab check the REMOTE LOGIN. You can also enable Apache and FTP by checking the FTP and WEB SHARING options.

Users can know SSH to your computer. Users must have an account in your computer to be able to login. Notice if you are familiar with Unix you can also enable Telnet (not recommended).

Privileges are controlled just like in Unix, except that since MacOS X has a great GUI you can easily change the ownership and permissions of a file. In the Finder select any file or folder and click CMD+I you can also select GET INFO from the File menu, or right-click on the file and select GET INFO from the contextual menu. In the Ownership and Permissions section you can set what a user can do.

Connecting to other Unix systems:

Boy this is easy. We have plenty of options. First lets go the geeky way (Unix way). Perhaps you do not know but inside your Utilities folder in the Applications folder is one of the most powerful tools in your computer: the TERMINAL. Fire up this bad boy and you will find how easy is to connect to an Unix system.

Since we have all of those basic tools found in any Unix system we can TELNET, SSH, or FTP into another Unix machine that is supporting any of these services. For example here in colegio Professors and Staff with accounts in academic.uprm.edu or dumount.uprm.edu can SSH into their accounts. To do so open the TERMINAL and type:

then press enter. If this is the first time you login to this machine you will be prompted to accept or reject the access key. Type yes to accept the key.

To connect to a Unix machine graphically you will need X11. There are two X11 version for MacOS X, I personally suggest Apple's own port. Download X11 at http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/. Just run the installer and you will be set.