OSX 10.3.9 and windows permissions...

[Ben-UK]

Afternoon all,

 

Quick question about OSX 10.3.9 and setting file permissions for windows clients.

 

Got an old mac running 10.3.9 with an atteached external HDD for storaging data.

 

The mac is joined to the 2003 domain.

 

Users connect to the drive via \\mac ip address\path\

 

It appears that everyone on the domain can access the shared drive and do what they want delete, move, rename etc

 

I go to "sharing" set-up on the mac and select windows sharing, but there's only on/off options. Sure there should be more options for setting up access right etc

 

Any help would be great.

 

Thanks Ben

[Serving]

not sure if its the same with 10.3, but the smb options are under the share point tab when you click the shared folder under sharing. There should be a protocol option and select smb.

[Ben-UK]

Thanks for the reply

 

I can see now option for SMB under the Sharing options in system preferences ??

 

Ben

[HodgeHi]

10.3.9 doesn't support ACL's. You will need to upgrade to at least Tiger to use them and then run a command to enable ACL support. You can however use posix to adjust the permissions but it will only be for the owner, group and everybody permissions.

[Ben-UK]

When you say ACL's you mean access control list's right ?

 

So just to confirm with mac osx 10.3.9 there's no way I can set permissions like I can and do in windows server.

 

Is Tiger 10.4 ??

[HodgeHi]

When you say ACL's you mean access control list's right ?

 

Yes.

 

So just to confirm with mac osx 10.3.9 there's no way I can set permissions like I can and do in windows server.

 

As far as I know there is no way to use ACLs in OS X 10.3.9

 

Is Tiger 10.4 ??

Yes Tiger is 10.4.

 

All of the above assumes that the mac you are running is a Power PC based mac. If so then you can potentially go up to 10.5.8, this being Leopard.

 

Tiger was a good version of OS X and the server even easier to support than Panther (10.3). But still there are a few hurdles that you need to jump over to get Tiger to integrate well into an AD environment if that is the direction you are thinking of going in. Leopard resolves most of Tiger's short-comings but does present a few of it's own issues.

 

Take a look at AFP548 - Changing the world one server at a time.. It has a good bit of information regarding administering 10.3. It's where I got most of my information from when I started down the mac route.

[AntonioRocco]

Hi

 

Mark (HodgeHi) is correct.

 

Prior to 10.4, ACLs were not supported and only 10.4 Server can assign overriding ACLs to file shares using a recognisable GUI. Command line only for the Client OS. For 10.3 or older standard POSIX (UNIX) permissions only. The POSIX permissions model is limited when compared to ACLs. You can't have multiple owners or groups and there are only 4 possible permissions variations - read/write, read only, write only and no access.

 

This does not necessarily stop you from using 10.3 as a file sharing server but you will run into permissions problems very soon! By default any user becomes the owner of any file or folder they create. Any one else who is not the creator will have read only access. Furthermore these default permissions 'follows' files or folders regardless of where they are stored. You can work around these default permissions but it can become an administrative nightmare very quickly as well as being a PITA.

 

POSIX permissions are assigned by default and is by design. Amongst other things this is what POSIX compliancy means. Apple takes this aspect of their OS very seriously.

 

If the hardware you're using is at least a G4 867Mhz Processor or better (best if a G5 processor) and meets the recommended requirements, you should still be able to source 10.5 Leopard? Possibly Amazon and/or eBay? Doubtful for 10.4 Server although you won't know until you try?

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

Edited February 14, 2012 by AntonioRocco