Create a shared, password protected folder for cross platform read/write

[vsboxerboy]

Okay, so what I wanted to do is set aside a little bit of space, say 10gigs, for each person on my network besides myself (which would be 3) to have as a little space to backup important documents and such in case their computer goes south. This would, of course, require that the folder be accessible over the LAN and password protected. I don't care what's being stored on there, so I don't need the password, just them.

Now it gets trickier in that there are both Macs (Tiger) and PCs (Vista & XP) on my network and it would be nice to be able to read/write from either a mac or pc as some people use both. This would probably be giving rise to some sort of complication of file system. I don't know if this requires separate partitions for each person, but it would be nice if the size of the share could be increased without a bunch of hassle.

Finally, it would be nice if these files could be accessed from a remote location. I'm pretty new to networking so I know basically what FTP, VPN, SSH, etc. are but not too much more. I'm sure I can figure out most of the details once I know basically what I need to do and which software to use.

 

[mobiux]

(This is based in a windows 2k/2k3 machine)
you could assign shares to each folder, within the properties restrict access to each share to an account on the server, give the user accounts unique credentials, give the user account info to only the person you want to have access to the share/folder.

When they try to browse to the share, it should prompt them for the username/password.