Posted on Saturday 24 February 2007 by Dave
One of the most appealing features from Home Server is having centralized storage space for all the PC’s on your network. To work seamlessly you will need to make sure that the user accounts on Home Server matches those on you PC. This will keep you from having to login each time you go to use the shared folders.
If you dont have the users matched and you go to login this is what you will see:
Now if you want to avoid having to do this here is what you do!
First Login to your Home Server Console:
In Home Server Console click on the User Accounts tab:
Click +Add to start the Add User Wizard:
Fill out the Name of the user, then the Logon Name and finally check if you want the user to have Remote Access. Click Next:
NOTE: As mentioned earlier make sure the Logon Name is the same as the one on your PC
You will now set a password for the user account. As with the Logon Name make sure that it matches the one you used on the PC. Input the password and confirm it the second time then click Next:
Setting permissions for your shared folders will allow you to limit access to folders by user account. The options are as follows:
Read/Write Users can access the folders contents, modify them, and create new items. This includes deletion so be careful if you give access to sensitive documents.
Read Users can only read the folders content and are unable to modify them or create new items.
No Access As simple as it sounds. If you do not give the user access to the folder they cannot read, modify, or create items.
Set the permissions you want and click Finish:
Home Server will then create the user account and set permissions. It also creates a personal directory for the user that only they will have access to. To exit the wizard click Done
You will now see the new user account you created in the Home Server console under the User Accounts tab
Nice and easy!
This next part is for the more technical people in the house and has no bearing on setting the user accounts up. From the way this looks it is using a pass through authentication we all came to know and love back with non domain NT servers. An additional feature I would like to see would be some kind of utility to keep your Logon Names synced across all your PCs. Without using the server for centralized accounts perhaps a Administrator account on each machine for Home Server to make password changes.
UPDATE
It looks like I spoke to soon about keeping the passwords synced. It has been included! When I created that account by mistake I did it with a different password then my local PC. I soon got the yellow house alert and when I clicked on it I got the following window:
In my case I want to keep my local password and change the one on the server. So I choose the option Keep my password on this computer which then asks me to confirm my password locally AND put the password that is set for Home Server since it is different. Here is the success message:
After syncing the passwords I am back to my little green house of happiness!
I’m guessing that the first picture in your “UPDATE” section should be “user_accounts_11.png”, not 05.
Lachlan-
You are correct the wrong image was being loaded. I have corrected it. Thanks!
Dave
When you subsequently change a password it does not seem to sync with the server and other computers, is there a way of getting this to work or a better way to change passwords?