How can we choose the interface for file sharing in OS X 10.5.8?
February 17, 2010 10:28 AM   Subscribe

How can we choose the interface for file sharing in OS X 10.5.8?

Mac Pro running 10.5.8 on 2 wired networks - primary has DHCP and shares a connection to the internet and secondary has a static IP and is for an internal file-sharing network.

We've turned on SMB and shared out the appropriate folder, and if the primary adapter is turned off you can connect to the machine via the secondary on the static IP.

Once you connect the primary network adapter the IP that file sharing is using changes to the primary and no one on the secondary network can see the machine.

We've tried resetting the service order for the network adapters, but file sharing doesn't seem to respect this. Restarting and disabling / enabling these services doesn't make a difference.

We've even switched the physical order of the switches and reconfigured everything to match and for some reason OS X always wants to share files over the DHCP network adapter (it doesn't matter when we give this one a static IP on the public network either)

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
posted by rollo tomassi to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)
 
Dropbox
posted by unixrat at 10:38 AM on February 17, 2010


Response by poster: Drop box is not a viable option for this application because we are moving large, rights-managed files and a) I don't want them hitting the public internet, even with encryption and b) they are too large to upload and then download as part of the 'sync'.

I'm an enthusiastic user on the personal side though!
posted by rollo tomassi at 10:42 AM on February 17, 2010


You'll probably have to edit your /private/etc/smb.conf. You may have to add additional interfaces to the line. The syntax escapes me right now, but it should look like interfaces = eth*.
posted by zabuni at 11:02 AM on February 17, 2010


This is completely doable on the OS X server side (assigning different services to different interfaces), but I've never tried this from the client side. If I was setting up something like this I'd simply configure it at the firewall not to allow SMB traffic from the internet to the private network and use VPN for remote access.
posted by Oktober at 11:05 AM on February 17, 2010


Use a VPN to allow outside clients into the server's local network space. Then you can file share with some semblance of security in place.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:28 PM on February 17, 2010


OS X Server supports VPN configuration and access, as well as a secure web-based remote access option. It might be worthwhile looking into.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:31 PM on February 17, 2010


Response by poster: Thanks for the replies, but this isn't an inside / outside the network issue.

The issue is that file sharing is choosing one network interface over the other. I'm looking for a way to control which interface is chosen... it seems like zabuni is closest to the right track.
posted by rollo tomassi at 1:08 PM on February 17, 2010


He's technically on the right track, but on the Mac, if you don't do things the Apple (GUI) way, you're bound to run into trouble. I wouldn't be surprised that if you edit your smb.conf file it would work for a while, then get overridden the next time apple issues system updates. What I (and others) are saying is that with a modern firewall/router, there's little reason to do what you're doing.
posted by Oktober at 1:33 PM on February 17, 2010


Ideally, you would not open SMB or other file service ports to the outside world. You can do this, of course, but it is not advised.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:01 PM on February 17, 2010


He's not trying to open SMB to the outside world. OS X is sharing them on that interface, and he wishes to make it stop doing that, and only share on the internal interface.


(internal network)----cifs sharing----server----(Internet)

He doesn't want anyone on the Internet to see the file sharing. The server probably doesn't even provide Internet access to the clients on the inner network. There are no outside clients. He just can't figure out how, in the GUI, to determine the default network interface for samba, and change so the service responds on the internal network.

From looking at this online, most of the apple documentation seems to point towards the editing of files. I haven't been able to find a GUI setting, but I'm not by my mac right now.
posted by zabuni at 4:05 PM on February 17, 2010


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