I posted on Apple’s discussion forums, didn’t get much assistance.
I am a longtime Mac weenie, going back to the mid-eighties. I’m very comfy and well-versed in many things, but I confess that X has confounded me on many levels.
I am venturing into some serious, if small, networking. I have hired an assistant and now there are many things coming up where I want us to be able to work on the same things. The network thing is frustrating me, because I’m not completely clear on the details. I have managed to get all the computers networked successfully, and I even managed to get the laser printer into the mix, although I’m not entirely sure how I managed it and I don’t know that I could easily do it again. I think alot of things happened automatically, which is why I’m not sure what I did that was right.
But things are networked and I can definitely get in an out of all the computers. (There are up to 5 online at any given time, including 2 ibooks hooked in wirelessly), so it isn’t the hardware issues…it’s the whole business of accounts, permissions, shared folders, public folders, drop boxes, groups, staff, others… huh?
So my first question is really easy: Does anyone know of a good BOOK or other WRITTEN RESOURCE that explains OS X networking in DEPTH? I have a few books, including The Missing Manual…I can get a kind of top level explanation of accounts, some are admin, some are not, here’s what you can do…but then it gets a little vague. I looked on Amazon for a Mac networking book, but found no such animal, at least none that are current. Please fill me in if you know of any. (I knwo it’s actually UNIX networking, but that just gives me hives. I need to understand it via the Mac interface.)
Now my detailed questions/issues/examples:
I wanted my assitant to be able to work in my Quickbooks file. I used to be able to do this with no problem under 9: just make sure that there is only one copy of Quickbooks open at any one time, and no problem, anyone on the network can write to the file. Well, OSX, not so much. I made sure my Quickbooks was closed completely. I put the file in the “shared” folder on my computer…then after some experimenting, I changed all the permissions to “everyone can do everything”…and STILL I get the message from QB that the other user on the other poot cannot open the doc because it’s locked or because another copy of is open or because they do not have sufficient permission to open it. Well, not locked, no other copy open and all permissions are flung wide open…or so I thought. So in frustration I actually copied the doc (there are actually two) over to her computer and she opened it without a hiccup of any kind! So the issue was entirely around her trying to open it * across the network *but I can’t figure out what exactly wasn’t right. (And when I copied it back to my computer today, the permissions had changed…now her computer name “owned” it. How is ownership assigned automatically? When is the owner the user vs. the computer itself? Could I bypass these issues entirely by making documents live at the top level, outside the users folder? Isn’t there a better way? This whole accounts/users stuff is such a pain, my head hurts…)
But this brings me to the whole damn picture of accounts and logging in. I think I screwed up in my setups, so maybe someone can help me understand: should I, Stoid, have a single username and password that identifies me specifcally on every single computer, exactly the same? (This strikes me as not a great idea security-wise, but whatever) Because what I want is this: I want to have complete and unrestricted access to every single computer in every single way, without a single glitch. They are all my computers, I shoudl be able to work with everything. But I don’t know that that will work. I currently have a slightly different “account” identifying me on each computer. I did that to differentiate between which computer was talking to which computer, but I think that’s part of my problem. If it is, does anyone know the cleanest, simplest way for me to make my accounts match on every computer and move the user data and settings from one account to another if I have to create a whole new accounton each computer? And hell, shouldn’t I be able to log in as whatever user “owns” whatever document I want to work with and have it jsut work? (I tried that with the Quickbooks file, I tried to use it from my computer while it was still located on her computer, so I logged into her computer as her identity…it still didn’t let me, giving me the same errors it gave in reverse yesterday. I moved it back to my computer and opened it no problem.)
I also want my assistant to have a powerful account that allows her to easily work on anything I put in the Shared folder. (Currently we are getting around our problems by copying changed docs back and forth but that blows. I want to both work on the SAME document. Most of these documents are databases of one kind or another, and the only program that allows true “syncing” is Palm, where the appplication itself has a “merge” function where it looks at two altered databases and matches them to * each other*, as opposed to assigning one as the “right” one and simply overwriting the “wrong” one. This seems to me to be an obvious way that people would want to “sync” things, yet it is almost impossible to accomplish if the individual application doesn’t support it!) Everything else…if I make a change on mine and she changes hers, too…well, then we have to sacrifice one and make the changes to the other. Bleh. If we could both make changes to the same doc…and you know what, I KNOW this can be done…at least with some things. Or it used to be: I used to do support and consulting for a little business that had networked Macs under 9 and 4 people could access a complex multi-document Filemaker database * simultaneously. * There has to be a way to do this…at least with some things! And it doesn’t have to be simultaneous, even if we could switch off, so long as don’t have to copy…
Also: what is the deal with the permissions? How do I define groups? What are all those items on that dorp down menu, anyway? What is a “group”? Where do I define that? What do the options offered refer to? How does the computer know who is “Staff” and who is “others”? Should I set up my sister’s username and password on all computers, and mine on all computers, and then we’ll have access to those accounts in “groups” and assign permissions that way? Will it work?
I’m so frustrated! I want the power and efficiency that I know networking can offer, but right now it’s not working much better than dumping stuff onto CDs and handing them back and forth!
Also: Any OmniOutliner weenies out there? I love this program but I’m trying to get it to do things that maybe it can’t do. Any good resources for details about the prog?