Connect to pangea file shares from MacOS X

Last revision November 10, 2004

The Chooser from classic Macintosh has been replaced in MacOS X with the Connect to Server item from the Finder's Go menu.

Selecting Connect to Server brings up a window that lets you either browse the AppleTalk network for AppleShare servers, or connect directly to an AppleShare IP or Windows (or Samba) server.

Click on the Local Network item in the middle of the window to browse the AppleTalk network. You will see a zone list. Or, in the Address field at the bottom of the window, type the IP hostname or address of an AppleShare IP server, such as pangea.stanford.edu to get the pangea Aufs server.

To use the recommended Samba server on pangea, type the server and share name in URL format, as follows:

smb://pangea.stanford.edu/sharename

The first part of this URL, smb://, says that you are connecting to a server using the SMB protocol (the basis of Windows and Samba file serving). Next, you give the IP hostname or address of the computer running the service, in this case, pangea.stanford.edu/. Finally, you give the file share name in place of sharename. For pangea, use either your pangea account name to access your home directory, or one of the pre-defined share names.

After typing the URL for the Samba share on pangea, click the Connect button. There may be a short wait of a few seconds while your Mac negotiates the connection with pangea. Then you should see the Windows style login box.

Make sure that the Workgroup/Domain field is either empty or says Earth_Sciences (pangea is not part of a domain). Enter your pangea account name in the Username field, and your pangea local password in the Password field. Your SUNet ID password will not work. Your pangea password will be encrypted before it is sent out on the network, to keep it secure from hackers. Click OK, and you should see a new disk icon appear on your desktop in a few seconds with the share name.

If you have an old pangea account and have not changed your local pangea password in a long time, Samba may not recognize your pangea password and may refuse the connection. See the information on Samba password problems to fix this problem.

Additional information for MacOS X file sharing on pangea

Access from off-campus

Unfortunately, you cannot access pangea files in MacOS X from off-campus using Samba. AppleShare IP will still work from off campus, although it is much slower and less secure. See the information on connecting via the Chooser from a classic Macintosh.

Defining "shares"

Another restriction of the Samba access method is that the pangea system manager must pre-define all volumes ("shares" in Windows/Samba terminology). There is no provision for users to define their own shares based on directories they select, as can be done with pangea Aufs volumes. The pre-defined shares in Samba on pangea include:

A share for every user's home directory (with share name equal to the user's pangea account name).

/WWW -- a share that accesses the pangea web server's main directory (for people who are maintaining department or research group pages).

/ftp -- a share that accesses the pangea anonymous ftp disk area (for people who are distributing files that way).

/scr1 -- a share that accesses the pangea short term (15 day) scratch disk for temporary use, such as moving large files from one computer to another over the network.

/play -- a share that accesses the pangea medium term (12 week) "play" disk where you can store large files that you are working on during the current quarter. You must navigate to your own directory within /play to store files.

The pangea system manager can also create shares for specific groups that map to a directory on pangea that has group write access. Such shares will only be accessible to members of that group.

Converting from classic Macintosh to MacOS X

If you are converting from classic Macintosh to MacOS X, and have previously stored files on the pangea Aufs AppleShare server, you should follow this procedure to avoid problems accessing those files under MacOS X:

While still running the classic MacOS (7, 8, or 9) on your computer, connect via AppleShare to pangea Aufs and move all your stored Macintosh files in your Pangea-USERNAME-Mac-files volume to a local hard disk attached to your Mac.

While still running classic MacOS, delete (trash) the contents of your Pangea-USERNAME-Mac-files volume on pangea Aufs. You will not use that disk area under MacOS X.

While still running classic MacOS, look through all your files. Change any filenames that contain a slash (/) character to remove the slash. For example, replace it with a dash (-). The slash is illegal in MacOS X as a filename character and will make the file unusable at a minimum and crash your MacOS X system in the worst case.

If you plan to share these files with Windows PCs, add the appropriate filename extension to each file, for example, .doc for Word documents and .xls for Excel documents.

Once you have upgraded your Macintosh to MacOS X, connect to pangea using the Samba server (as described above), and then copy files back to your pangea home directory as desired.

This conversion will make all your files easily usable in MacOS X with the faster Samba access method.

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