Thanks to tonymy01 for the information about the effects of netmask on scanning the network for shares. Thanks to GB for assistance with information about setting up 'Sharing Only' accounts.
Although the Beyonwiz manual and Network Setup section of the menu call this "Windows Sharing" it will work just fine with a Mac. Windows Sharing is the SMB network sharing protocol.
These tips assume that the network is already set up between your Beyonwiz(s) and your Mac. To test whether it is, see Testing the network from a Mac to a Beyonwiz using ping.
OS X 10.7 Lion does not support Network Sharing with Beyonwizes - Important! Includes workaround information.
In Lion, Apple have moved away from the freeware Samba server for Windows Shareing support, and have developed their own server, SMBX. This apparently does not interoperate with the older Samba client in the Beyonwiz firmware (or with some other embedded Linux products such as Popcorn Hour and XMBC).
John Large has posted a workaround that installs the Samba 3 server on Lion, and this apparently does support the Beyonwiz client (and other older clients - John Large's intention was to support sharing to an XMBC). This workaround assumes a certain amount of familiarity with the Unix environment on OS X Terminal, hand configuration of Samba and the use of text editors. I have not personally tested this workaround.
Thanks to Rockets for the information about the change to the Windows Sharing servers in Lion, and to mitty for tracking down John Large's workaround post. And, of course, to John Large for the workaround itself.
OS X 10.5.4 update, OS X 10.4 2008-004 security update and networking - Important!
In OS X 10.5.4 (Leopard) update and in OS X 10.4 (Tiger) security update, a new version of the server program, smbd, which supports Windows Sharing on OS X, is installed by the update. This server program crashes and the Beyonwiz hangs when a Beyonwiz tries to access Windows Sharing on the Mac after the updates are installed. There is a workaround to restore Windows Sharing to the Beyonwiz, but the workaround re-installs the old version of smbd that has a security flaw that was intended to be fixed by the updates.
OS X 10.4 1008-005 security update also installs the new version of smbd, so you will need to re-apply the workaround to restore Windows Sharing to your Beyonwiz if you install 2008-005 on an OS X 10.4 Mac, too.
This problem is fixed by MacOS X Leopard 10.5.5. If you have had this problem in 10.5.4, and were unwilling or unable to use the workaround, then updating to 10.5.5 should fix the problem.
This problem is not fixed for MacOS X Tiger 10.4.x by installing Security Update 2008-006 (see also this post from brendonh).
This advice is important when setting up DHCP on your ADSL Router and it comes care of Forum User Tonymy01
Ensure you setup the router DCHP server so that it gives out a 255.255.255.0 netmask (subnet mask), as this will limit the number of machines able to connect to 253 machines, and then the network scan that the wiz does looking for active IP addresses will only take seconds, not hours!
If DHCP is distributing netmask values like 255.0.0.0 or 255.255.0.0, the Beyonwiz will scan tens of millions (in the first case) or tens of thousands (in the second case) of network addresses to try to find you Mac's PC shares.
Setting the Mac username for Windows Sharing on the BW
Note: Older Firmware versions before 01.04.144 do not have the Windows Sharing option. If you do not see the Windows Sharing option on your beyonwiz's Networking menu you need to update the firmware.
Unless you choose one of the read-only access options below, you need to set the username and password of a user on your Mac in the Beyonwiz Setup>Network>Windows Sharing.
The username to use is the Mac short username, which is quite likely to be different from the one you use to log in to your Mac. It is usually at least all lower case when the normal Mac username is mixed case. It is not your .Mac username if you have one. Case ins important in the user name (Peter is a different username from peter).
If you don't know what your Mac short username is:
On MacOS X 10.5 (Leopard), open System Preferences>Accounts, and Control-click (or right-click on a multi-button mouse) on the user whose short name you want, and select Advanced Options. The advanced options panel will pop up and the Short Username is one of the fields. Don't modify anything here! Use Cancel to close the panel.
On MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger), open System Preferences>Accounts, and click (or right-click on a multi-button mouse) on the user whose short name you want. The short name is displayed in the panel.
Sharing your home folder - OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
If you are running Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) this is the only sharing you can do easily without downloading and installing software for your Mac.
- In Apple>System Preferences>Sharing, tick Windows Sharing (Mac OS X 10.4 - Tiger); or in Apple>System Preferences>Sharing>Options (Mac OS X 10.5 - Leopard), tick Share files and folders using SMB. You can tick others file sharing options in both 10.4 and 10.5, too if you want, but they can't be used by your Beyonwiz.
- In Apple>System Preferences>Sharing>Accounts (10.4), or Apple>System>Preferences>Sharing>Options (10.5) tick each of the users' home folders you want to share. You'll be asked for each user's password in turn. On 10.5, make sure all of the users' home folders you want to share are in the Shared Folders list; if not use + under the list to add them.
- On the Beyonwiz, in Setup>Network>Windows Sharing, set the username to one of the the short account names you enabled in step 2, and the password to that user's password. When you enter the password, it will be shown in the type-in box, but not in the Windows Sharing screen.
- Then go to File Play>Network, and press YELLOW for Clear All PC, then press RED for Scan. You should see the name of your Mac appear in the menu.
- Press OK, then OK again and you should see your home folder under the short accountname. You can now navigate around in it, copy files to and from it, and stream media from your Mac.
- Only the folder you've set the user name/password for will be visible, even if several users are set up for sharing. To see another user's folder, change the username/password, Clear All PC, then Scan.
On OS X 10.5 (Leopard), when you share a user's home folder this way, when the Beyonwiz connects to the Mac, it will see the user's home folder, and all the disk volumes on the Mac as well. If you want to avoid this, see "Sharing Only accounts - OS X 10.5 (Leopard)" below.
Sharing other folders from your Mac - OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
It's possible to edit /etc/smb.conf from a Mac Terminal window to do this configuration, but it's not for the faint of heart. Fortunately the donationware Sharepoints makes the configuration much easier.
Sharepoints isn't a Mac OS X package; you have to install it by hand, but it's not hard. The instructions are in the README folder of the Sharepoints.dmg file (in English, French, Italian & Japanese). The installation instructions are near the end of the file.
Sharing other folders read-only from your Mac - OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
- In Apple>System Preferences>Sharing, tick Windows Sharing. You don't need to enable any users.
- In Apple>System Preferences>Sharepoints, set up your shares. Share Name is the name that you'll see the share as on the Beyonwiz. Directory is the name of the folder you want to share. Tick Allow Windows Guests for each share. Allow at least read permission for all of Owner, Group and Everyone.
- On the Beyonwiz, you don't need to have any username/password set, though it doesn't appear to matter if a valid username/password is there.
- Clear All PC, Scan and explore the share as above.
- You'll be able to copy files from your Mac and stream media from it but you won't be able to copy files to it. Guest access is read-only. If you try to copy to the Mac you'll get an error saying there isn't enough space. Strange message, but that's what you get.
- You may also see folders corresponding to printers on your Mac. This has been reported for some Canon Pixmar printers, but it may happen for others, too. You can't use them, and there doesn't seem to be a way to make them go away.
This is a combination of the other two setups.
- In Apple>System Preferences>Sharing, tick Windows Sharing.
- In the same panel, click on Accounts, and tick each of the home folders you want to share. You'll be asked for each user's password in turn.
- On the Beyonwiz, in Setup>Network>Windows Sharing, set the username to one of the the short account names you enabled in step 2, and the password to that user's password. When you enter the password, it will be shown in the type-in box, but not in the Windows Sharing screen.
- In Apple>System Preferences>Sharepoints, set up your shares. Share Name is the name that you'll see the share as on the Beyonwiz. Directory is the name of the folder you want to share. You may also tick Allow Windows Guests for shares. Set the user name and permissions as though you were setting those permissions for a normal folder. They only apply to the top-level share folder. You'll probably also want to tick Inherit permissions from parent. This will mean that new folders and recordings will inherit the permissions of the top folder.
- If you already have folders & files in your share, set them up with the appropriate permissions. That will probably be the same as your setup for the top-level share folder.
- Clear All PC, Scan and explore the share as above.
- You'll be able to copy to and from, and stream media from the Mac as though you were the user that the Beyonwiz has in its username/password.
- When you change settings on the Mac, you almost always have to Scan again. Regularly Clear All PC, then Scan.
- In Apple>System Preferences>Accounts, create a Guest account if there isn't one already (click + under the accounts list, and select Sharing Only in the account creation pane. Don't set a password.
- Click on the Guest account and make sure Allow guests to connect to shared folders is ticked.
- In Apple>System Preferences>Sharing set up the folders you want to share. Allow Read access for Everyone. You'll also need to make sure that Everyone has read access in all files and subfolders that you want guest to have access to.
- Follow steps 3-6 in Sharing other folders read-only from your Mac - OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
On Mac OS X 10.5 this is the same as Sharing your home folder, but you simply put whatever folders you want to share in the Shared Folders list in Apple>System Preferences>Sharing using the + and - buttons. You'll need to make sure that the user who wants to access the shared folder has the appropriate permissions both in the Sharing panel and in the Mac OS folders and files themselves. As noted in the Sharing your home folder section, all volumes on the Mac will be visible if viewed this way. To avoid that, and to be able to use a different password for sharing files to the Beyonwiz than is used for "real" accounts on the Mac, see the next section.
Sharing Only accounts - OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
OS X 10.5 allows the creation of "Sharing Only" accounts, which are well suited to accessing shares on you Mac. The only drawback is that any files that are copied from the Beyonwiz to the Mac will be owned by the sharing account, and not by any "normal" account on the Mac.
To set up a Sharing Only account:
- Open Apple>System Preferences>Accounts, and click '+' under the list of users to add the account.
- Select Sharing Only in the New Account popup pane.
- Enter the main fields (user name, short user name, password, etc) as normal.
- On OS X 10.5 and 10.5.1, there is a bug in SMB sharing that prevents Sharing Only accounts from being listed as available for sharing (:!:
). To work around this, change the user's Login Shell from /usr/bin/false to one of the shells in the dropdown list (say, /bin/sh). There are more details about this in the Apple Discussions forum. The workaround was suggested there by biovizier, and spelt out in detail by akseez. - Click OK to create the account.
- Set up sharing as for a normal user in Sharing other folders read-write from your Mac - OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
- When that is done, for 10.5 and 10.5.1, Control-click on the Sharing Only user (it may now be noted as a normal user), select Advanced Options, and change the Login Shell back to /usr/bin/false. If you exit from System Preferences, then return to Apple>System Preferences>Accounts, the Sharing Only user should be listed as such in the list of users.
- On the Beyonwiz, in Setup>Network>Setting>LAN (or W-LAN), press GREEN for Status, and note the entry in IP Address.
- In Applications>Utilities>Network Utility, click on the Ping tab.
- Enter the IP Address from the Beyonwiz in the type-in box under Please enter the network address to ping.
- Click on Send only, and enter a small number, say 2, in the box.
- Click on Ping. You should see something like
Where it says 10.1.1.4 here, you should see the IP Address you entered in the typein box. Some of the other numbers may be different, too, especially the "time' entries. If you don't see "64 bytes from..." messages, there's a problem with the net. The messages you get do give some hints about what's wrong, but that's beyond the scope of this FAQ.Code: Select all
Ping has started ... PING 10.1.1.4 (10.1.1.4): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 10.1.1.4: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=1.106 ms 64 bytes from 10.1.1.4: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.588 ms --- 10.1.1.4 ping statistics --- 2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.588/0.847/1.106/0.259 ms
Vatoe wrote: - I can report for any Mac users that may have Parallels installed that WizFX will work seamlessly with your Mac & Parallels. I have used it in 'coherence mode' which allows me to continue working with my Mac apps. Checking networking performance via iStat seems to suggest a download rate of 1 MB/S which is confirmed via Parallels / Windows XP networking performance in task manager. This seems to be consistent with what other Windows users have reported.
Couple of 'tricks':[/size]
- I couldn't see my Wizzy at first via WizFX - I ended up entering the IP address (static) of the Wizzy into the Favourites setting. Not sure if Windows users had to do this?
- Make sure that 'server' setting is enable on the Wizzy.
, I have not encountered this an issue. I have set up my sharing account so that it shares the main public folder (which is of course owned by the relevant normal (or "standard" in Leopard-speak) account). Any files copied there from the P1 via the sharing account are fully accessible by that standard account (can be copied, deleted, modified, etc).
