Sc@-tt3r-ed Thoughts

A couple of days ago, I was dealing with the issue of trying to have home directories residing on Mac servers where the users would connect to these home directories which are auto created from their Mac workstations, but also, need these same home directories to be available for mapping via login script to the Windows clients.

The problem that I was faced with, which also matches my philosophy about security, was that everywhere else where I had created shares, I had them setup as hidden shares. Something makes me uneasy knowing that users would be able to just browse all shares (Even though they can’t really access them) if the shares are not hidden.

So, in all my Windows environments, where user data is on Windows shares, the path looks something like this:

D:\User\Students\%USERNAME% with a share point physically pointing to D:\User, and named user$, so the path to the user’s home directory from a UNC perspective would look like this:

\\servername\user$\students\%USERNAME%

Can you guess where the problem is on a Mac, trying to create the same type of share?

\\servername\user$\students\%USERNAME%

From my research, it doesn’t seem like it’s even possible to create a hidden share from Mac OS X Server, at least not natively. I have tried everything, from changing the name of the share to have a “$” sign in it, to changing the share name in the SMB protocol options. Non worked, or returned the expected result.

The solution ended up being a hack, it’s not permanent, as it will revert back to non hidden state if any changes are made to that share point, but, realistically speaking, once a share is created, it’s permanently there, or at least long term.

To make a share hidden on a Mac, so that Windows can access it, create the Mac share , and enable the SMB protocol, and specify the name of the share. To be consistent with the above example, we’ll name the sharepoint: “user”

Once the share is created, and all the ACLs are set, open up Terminal, and su – to root

then: cd /var/samba/shares

The share we just created above will show up in that directory, just rename that to user$:

mv user user$

Now, try to access the share like you would from Windows: \\servername\user$\students\%USERNAME%

You will notice that you are now able to do so without any problems.

Of course, this article is only explaining how to create a share, and not how to properly configure Samba. There is additional details that you need to be aware of when configuring Samba, mostly related to user authentication, especially, if the Macs are not authenticating to a common directory.  This article can give a bit of an insight on how that works: http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/using_samba/appf.html

Have you ever heard of the phenomenon that happens with some community sites that come around? If you are even the slightest internet user , you would be aware of eBay, MySpace, Facebook, etc …

With all my experience on these sites, and these communities, I had not known about the site I’m going to introduce you to until just recently. It is, indeed, a cultural phenomenon in itself… when you go to it, and start participating in the forums, you will know why.

Let’s start with the basics, the site is called WOOT! , and you can find it at http://www.woot.com

The concept of the site is actually very simple: They place one item up everyday for a ridiculously cheap price, and you can buy it for that price. it’s that simple. When I say cheap, I’m talking 60, 70, or 80% off the retail price. granted, sometimes, for electronics, the items are refurbished, but they are great nonetheless. Also, a lot of items, are actually brand new, and a lot of times, their items come in a 2 for 1 package, which ends up being a truly amazing price for that item.

I have personally purchased a refurb vaccuum cleaner from there, and it is working like a charm.

If that isn’t enough, there is actually an event that happens every so often, and it is called a “Woot Out” … where they basically have a marathon of items on display, as soon as the item is out of stock, they put up the next one, and the next one. The trick to that, is that there is no way for us to know how many (quantity) of a particular item they have, so basically you have to keep looking. The deals that come up during a Woot Out! are unbelievable, sometimes very stupid, but sometimes really good.

The cultural piece to that is that the fact that people who are hooked on this site, actually spend an all nighter waiting for the next item, as to not miss out on something that may be cool, the forums, during these events (and even regular days, for that matter) , are hilarious .. check them out …

Are you convinced? No ?? seriously? Ok … here’s one more thing… during a Woot Out! , there is one special item, which is, hilariously called, the Woot “Bag of Crap”, yup , you heard it right, the site has a weird sense of humor, but nothing dirty ever, so you can safely let your kids go to it. ok, back to the “Bag of Crap” .. it’s basically, well, just that, colloquially speaking, of course

The best deal about this bag is that you only pay $1 for it, that’s it! It doesn’t matter what is in it, sometimes valuable stuff, and sometimes, not so valuable, but what can you lose for $1…

I personally have never gotten the “Bag of Crap”, because, I’m not known to have that lucky streak, but I know other people have, and maybe if you end up getting it sometime, you can tell me what’s in it

I hope that you liked this little review about Woot! , and perhaps you will start taking a look at it like I do.

And by the way, if you end up getting hooked, and you happen to use Firefox, you can download a Woot Watcher Add-On, which will show you the current woot in your firefox taskbar, kind of a cool little utility, though to be honest, it doesn’t update as often, or as I’d expect it to, but it works, sorta