If you want to make files available to anonymous users only, then you don't need the services of the Mac OS's File Sharing because Rumpus won't require username and password information for users. However, to provide mixed access or access to registered users only, you'll need to enable File Sharing and manage users via the Users & Groups Control Panel. While we can't show you everything you need to know to manage File Sharing in this manual, let's review the basic steps to help get you started.

Activating File Sharing

The first step in providing File Sharing service on the Mac OS is to identify the owner's username and password and to identify your Mac on the network using a unique name. To get started, open the Control Panels and choose Sharing Setup under Mac OS 7.x, or File Sharing for Mac OS 8 (shown in Figure 19).

Figure 19: The Sharing Setup Control Panel.

Follow these steps to complete the first phase of configuring your Mac for File Sharing.

1. Choose a name up to 32 characters in length for the owner (administrator) of the Mac that will provide File Sharing services. This person will have full access when logged in via AppleShare.

2. Choose a case-sensitive password up to 8 characters in length.

3. Choose a name by which the Mac will be known on the network. This name can be up to 32 characters in length, and will appear in alphabetical order in the Chooser when AppleShare is selected.

4. Click the File Sharing Start button to begin File Sharing, which takes several seconds to initialize. It takes longer to start File Sharing on Macs with larger hard drives or large numbers of files and folders. To stop File Sharing, click the Stop button. The Program Linking button can be ignored for the purposes of configuring Rumpus.

5. Close the Sharing Setup Control Panel when finished.

Users & Groups

The next step is to create users and groups of users for whom access to your Mac is to be granted. To get started, open the Control Panels and choose Users & Groups, shown in Figure 20.

Figure 20: The Users & Groups Control Panel.

Double clicking on the owner icon will display the owner's login settings dialog. You may want to check "Allow user to see all disks" option, which will allow you full access to the entire Rumpus FTP folder hierarchy. Please note that anyone who logs in as the owner will have full access to the entire directory structure, even if they are not explicitly granted privileges in the sharing permissions. You can avoid this situation by not selecting this option and sharing only portions of the volume instead.

To add new users, open the Users & Groups Control Panel and select "New User" from the "File" menu, or press Command-N. You will need to create a user here in order to allow the user to access a folder using File Sharing.

Selecting Files & Folders

The final step is to select a folder from which files are to be shared via FTP. As we mentioned earlier, Rumpus shares files from a common directory much like a Web server, rather than from individual folders that may or may not belong to a specific user. Like UNIX systems, Rumpus identifies a specific folder from which files, folders, and aliases are to be served to FTP users. The final step in configuring File Sharing to work in conjunction with Rumpus is to set the sharing privileges for the shared FTP folder. To do so, follow these steps.

1. Locate the Rumpus FTP folder, selected in the Basic configuration tab by clicking the "FTP Folder" button.

2. Select the folder by clicking on it once, then choose "Sharing..." from the "File" menu.

3. The sharing properties dialog box, shown in Figure 21, will open and display several configuration options.
   
   Figure 21: The Sharing properties dialog box in MacOS 8.

4. Check the "Share this item and its contents" box. This option won't be available if the FTP folder is inside a folder or volume that is already shared. In this case, the FTP folder is already shared.

5. Assign yourself as the owner of the folder in the "Owner" drop-down list. Choosing another user will enable that person to change the sharing privileges for this folder.

6. In the "User/Group" drop-down list, select the user or group of users that you would like to grant access to the folder.

7. The "Everyone"checkboxes allow you to provide all users (anonymous or registered) access to the folder. To completely disallow access to a folder by anonymous users, be sure to turn all three checkboxes off.

8. Do not click the "Copy these privileges to all enclosed folders" button unless you really intend to do so. This is important to remember because the FTP Files folder may contain folders with varying degrees of access privileges for multiple users.

9. When you are done, close the window.

You may change the sharing privileges for any folder or sub-folder within the FTP root hierarchy so that users will not have access to individual folders. However, even secured folders will be visible to users without access rights when they are in a folder in which they do have access privileges. In other words, a user may see that a folder they don't have access to exists, even though they cannot go into the secured folder. The same holds true for access to folders and volumes that have been aliased, described next.