Subject: How to share at cslab: the office share


Hi all;

Mom told you that it's nice to share with your friends, so here's 
how you do it with your co-workers. 

The department has a chunk of filespace designated to be used
by administrative staff for files (documents) that you all need
access to, but giving access to everyone in the department would
not be appropriate. (Mom said share with friends, not everyone
at the playground.) This chunk of space is called a 'share'. 

To have access to the share you have to be in the 'dcsoffice'
group. This is usually done you start an administrative role,
(unless I forget). Everyone getting this mail is (or soon 
will be) in the dcsoffice group. 

From one of cslab's unix machines this filespace is identified 
as /h/22/shares/dcsoffice/. From a Windows machine it would be 
\\smb.cs.toronto.edu\officestaff$ (Yes I know the name changed
from "dcsoffice" to "officestaff", which might be a bit confusing.
My bad. 50 lashes with a wet noodle :( 

Since most office staff have a Windows machine, here is an easy 
way to set it up once and not have to remember how to find it.


 Mapping a drive letter to a share
===================================

Right click "My Computer" on your desktop and select "Map network drive"

For drive pick " O " (to stand for Office staff)

For folder type

    \\smb\officestaff$

[Don't forget the dollar sign at the end. It's a magic character
that tells the server not to "advertise" the share. Think of it
as saying "shh" at the end, like telling a secret]

Check the "reconnect at next logon" so it will be there next time
and save you from having to do this every time you want to use 
the share. 

Select "Finish"


 Mapping with a web browser
============================ 

If you are outside the department's firewall you can use a web 
browser. 

 https://smb.cs.toronto.edu/smb/officestaff$

Internet Explorer supports switching to webdav (drag and drop)
but Firefox and others do not. On linux use konqueror for 
drag and drop with the protocol 'webdavs' eg: 

 era.cs% konqueror webdavs://smb.cs.toronto.edu/smb/officestaff\$ &

[This isn't specifically for the officestaff share, it works for
all of them, including your home directory, 
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~lloyd/howtoDCS/office/workfromhome/davenport.html 
].



 Share nicely and be careful! 
==============================

By default everyone has access to everything in the share, meaning
someone else can alter or even delete your files, (if you want to 
avoid this happening to you, remove group write from your files or 
folders). 

It also means you can trash things that don't belong to you. 

If your files are no longer relevent, tidy up after yourself
and delete them. 


 Sometimes sharing can be embarassing. 
=======================================

Finally anything you put in here can be seen by the other members
of the group, you might share something you didn't intend to (This 
is why Mom kept you out of the playground when you had chicken pox.) 
If you have lots of stuff you don't want to share with others, you 
might not want to check that "reconnect at logon" afterall, just in 
case you copy to the wrong drive. 


You can even specify which individuals can access or modify specific
files, but we'll save that for the advanced class.