- Challenges of File Sharing
- Different Protocols for Different Clients
- Planning File Services
- Using Apple Filing Protocol
- Configuring Apple File Service
- Monitoring AFP Activity
- Using Windows File Service
- Configuring Windows File Service
- Configuring Access and Starting Windows File Services
- Using NFS Share Point Access
- Configuring NFS
- Using FTP File Service
- Configuring FTP Service
- Network-Mounted Share Points
- Preparing for a Network Home Folder
- Configuring Network Mounts
- Controlling Access to Shared Folders
- Troubleshooting File Services
- What Youve Learned
- References
- Chapter Review
Network-Mounted Share Points
You’ll often need to make files and folders on a server available to users on client computers. One way to do that is to tell users to connect to the server from the Finder. Connecting from the Finder is easy, but it requires users to remember which server to connect to and where to find the files on that server.
For frequently accessed resources, such as applications, libraries, or fonts, you might want to simplify your users’ experience even more. If so, you can make a folder, disk, or partition on a server mount automatically on some or all of the client computers in a domain. You do this by configuring network-mounted share points.
For example, suppose you want to have a specific set of applications available to every user in a given LDAP directory. You could create a share point containing the desired applications and then set the share point to automatically mount into a /Network/Applications folder on client computers that can utilize either the AFP or the NFS protocol. To do this, you configure the share points using Server Admin, and then select the Enable Automount checkbox and click the Edit button to configure those share points to automatically appear in a folder in the Finder windows of supported client computers. Information about these automatically mounted share points is stored in the LDAP directory.