Basic Networking Question

D

Durntdude

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 22, 2011
Messages
87
is there a way to set just set a simple username/password setup for folders to share it to certain people over a network?

Essentially what I would like to be able to do is go to any folder, right click on the folder, hit share with users(or similar button) and then be able to input usernames/passwords that can access the folder (or use pre-existing groups), change permissions (viewable/readable/editable).

Additionally, if I have a folder shared with a friend that comes over on occasion, I don't want other housemates to even see the share. Homegroups obviously won't work since you can't have multiple homegroups on a network.

I don't mind if I need software on the computer that is sharing but I can't have special software needed on clients (as they are TVs/ouya/apple tv, ect..)

EDIT: I also don't want to have to add 10 different accounts to my login screen just to share with 10 different people when only I will ever use the computer
 
Mapping a Network Drive? Create individual user accounts (Standard NOT Admin) on the machine doing the hosting of the shared file. Right click the folder/file/drive being shared. Go to Share With>Advanced Sharing. Enable the sharing of the file/folder/drive. Name the share whatever you want. Hit permissions. Remove the "Everyone" account and add the accounts you created. Change the read/write/full control to your liking.


Tell each person to map a network drive and tell them the address is: \\<sharing_persons_IP>\share_name.

For example: \\192.168.1.100\mysharedfiles

Make sure they check "Connect using different credentials".
 
While that does work, it isn't what I'm looking for as it both requires a lot more accounts on the computer that are only used to share files (my OCD will bug me about it), and it doesn't hide files folders that the clients don't have permission for. It won't let them run/edit the files but the files are still visible
 
Well, technically you only need one extra account so long as the shared content was to be the same for everyone intended on accessing the share. It seems rather silly to share an entire folder and have certain files hidden inside of it from users accessing the share. I'm not even sure if non-Windows Server OS'es can even do that to be honest. It's contrary to the way sharing, permissions, and inheriting works, but hey maybe someone knows a way. People need to have Read permissions to the entire folder to access it and that means reading the entire directory unless you specify certain files within it not to be shared at all, but them being visible is more difficult to fix. Perhaps someone with more experience has a solution. I know there's a lot you can do with changing the inheritance, but that's not something I personally touch.

That seems to be the real technical thing holding you back, the rest is just the OCD, which I think even if it showed 10 user logins there is a registry or GPO hack that will fix that IIRC.

Perhaps creating a special folding with shortcuts and sharing that will solve the problem? A quick hack maybe?
 
Last edited:
Ideally I want to share certain private folders with only my computers, share different folders with certain people who are not always here, share 1 movie folder with another set of people and a separate movie folder with a different set of people. This would require (as far as I know) a minimum of 4 user accounts and possibly more in the future.

Also, I may have not quite detailed one part enough. I don't want to hide individual files insides shared folders. I want be able to hide the entire share folder from those who don't have permission so that it doesn't even show those folders on the network. I was hoping there was a way where the computer would show zero shared files but if you went and tried to map lets say /192.168.x.x/video1, then it would ask for username/pw, and if it was correct, it would map it and you could access anything in the folder
 
Last edited:
Who cares if they can see it as long as they can't access it.

You need to create the accounts on the computer as mentioned. Either that or use a NAS and manage the users on it.
 
You can put $ at the end to "hide" the names. I say "hide" because all that does is it tells the client "hey, this is a hidden folder, don't display me!" but it should be good enough for general people. Obviously you want to rely on permissions more than if they can see it or not.
 
hiding the folders is mostly to not have an entire screen of shares but alas, if it isn't really possible, then oh well =(

Will look in to a NAS solution
 
if you use advanced sharing you can add a $ symbol to the end of the share name and it will hide it from users who don't know its there, users who want access to the hidden folder can either map it directly to their desktop or can manually type the share name.

my cctv shares are hidden so that only the server that has the software installed uses them as they are stored on my main storage server. they don't appear in network places unless I manually look for them.

permissions then is down to whomever you add to the sharing permissions.
 
If you want different users to have different access then you need some way to authenticate those users...if you don't want to create user accounts directly on your PC you have a couple options:
#1. Create/Join a domain - A lot of work and you still have to create accounts but at least they're not directly on your PC (I only suggest this because your 'OCD' appears to be the actual issue here and this may or may not be ok with your OCD)

#2. FileZilla FTP Server - Share via FTP

#3 Buy a NAS.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top