Problem seeing my Mac from pc, so I can use it as a share for ns01

Posted by: Claus-Thoegersen on 05 March 2012

 

I know this is not a Mac forum, but many here use macs, so maybe others have experienced something similar.

I want to use my Mac Mini as a share for my ns01. This means I have to enable file sharing on the Mac. The machine is a Mini from midt 2009 running 10.6.8.

I have followed the guides on how to setup Windows file sharing, enabling smb, and give the correct workgroup Name, setting up folders to share and the permissions for both my regular mac user account and guest account, all users have both read and write access to the shared folders.

I can access both my Windows computers from the mac. I can ping the mac from the Windows machines, but I cannot access the Mac, it does not show up in the network list on the Windows machines. I get the usual Windows network error both when I try to connect to the Minis IP address, or  using the machine Name.

I have gone over the ssettings many times over the last week, and I can find no troubleshooting guides on the web, it seems either just to work, or not at all, and for most people I suppose it works.

I have other sollutions, but my Windows machine is more noisy than the Mini, and if I can get this to work I can wait some time until I end up buying a   nas.

 

Claus

Posted on: 05 March 2012 by Phil Harris

Doing what's called "simple file sharing" from either a Mac or a Windows PC (using Vista or W7) is rather fraught nowadays - neither seem to like being asked to do simple SAMBA file sharing. Windows tries to coral you into using HomeGroups and OSX restricts you to the current users shared folder.

 

As it's so hit-and-miss then we are no longer able to support filesharing from PCs or Macs and just recommend doing it properly and using a NAS ... £200 will get you a 2Tb ReadyNAS Duo and then just pop in a second 2Tb drive (for backup) when you can do.

 

Cheers

 

Phil 

Posted on: 07 March 2012 by pj5

I have the 2011 mac mini running lion os and had similar problems but here is what i did to get it working.

 

Created a new user and set it to a sharing only account

put the files in the \users\shared folder (not under my login account shared folder)

shared this foder & no others

give the new user r/w access to it

on the windows machines create a batch/command file to map the share to a drive using the new user details i.e.

 

net use m: \\192.168.1.20\shared /USER:newuser password

 

have also put the file in the startup folder so it maps the drive on login to windows