Introduction to File Sharing

hello again as you know I am Eli the computer guy today's class is introduction to file-sharing so so this may seem like a like a very simple topic you may wonder why we have an entire class on just sharing files well in the new world that we're in that sharing files is no longer the simple thing that used to be there are a lot of different ways to share files there's a lot of different functionality and file sharing and there's a lot of different products that you can use simply to allow multiple people to get to the same file or folder this class is going to discuss all the different types and ways of sharing files so that you can decide either for yourself or for your client what way will serve you best we're going to talk about Web Services for file sharing we're going to talk about workgroups so where you actually have an internal LAN network we're going to be talking about domains but we're also going to talk about library systems week where you can check in and check out certain files we're going to talk about something called SMB and so you understand what that means we're going to talk about synchronization we're going to talk about real-time collaboration and we're going to talk about how these things function in the real world some of these technologies sound really really really great until you're the poor bastard who actually has to use them when it goes from the drawing board to the real world like I say some file sharing technologies look a whole lot better in theory than they do when you have some poor little secretary trying to figure out how to get to a file so this class is introduction to file sharing and we're going to go over all these things so you really understand how file sharing works in the modern world so the first thing that we need to talk about when we're talking about sharing a files is something as basic as permissions permissions are the rights that people have for changing a file are they allowed to read the file are they allowed to write to the file or are they allowed to execute a file now today we're going to talk about the three main permissions that every operating system basically share and that's read write and execute if you deal with a Microsoft server environment as of 2008 I think they're up to like 15 different permissions file directory listing and all kinds of stuff today we are going to only talk about the three major permissions read/write/execute because these are the permissions you will run into again whether you're using Windows whether you're using Mac whether you're using Linux or UNIX or whether you're using some kind of web service where you don't really even know what the operating system is on top of the normal permissions of read write and execute you then have something called ownership so the owner of a file is usually the person who created the file and they are the people that are allowed to change permissions on the file so the owner of the file can say who can read it who can write to it and who can execute the file so just just keep that in mind the owner of the file is the one that assigns permissions to the file or to the folder so read is the first permission D yeah just the normal read this is normally signified when you when you're when you're looking at a permission like if you do a directory listing it will yes a are so read read means that you can read the file so when you go to the file that's being shared you can open it up you can look at it and that is it so if it is a Word document and you open it up and you only have Commission you can open up you look at it if you try to edit it and save it you will not have permission to save it you may be able to save it as a copy you may be able to save it locally but you will not be able to save it back to the original file so that's important to remember you then have right you are e again signified by a W right means that you can write to the file so if you have both read and write permission it means you can open the file up you can edit it and then you can save it back to the original source something that is very important to remember about these permissions is these permissions are all individual you can have read permission without having write permission but something takes a little bit to get through your head you can have write permission without having read permission this gets more and do more complicated administration so you probably will not see this very much where somebody can write to a file but they cannot read in the file sometimes if you have certain types of scripts or people are supposed to like submit reports so you want them to basically have to have a Dropbox where they could save to a folder so they could write to a folder there for their their report but you don't want them to read it or you don't want them to edit it or you don't want them to read any other files within the folder you could give the person write permission so all these permissions are individual you can give somebody write read permission without write permission you can even give somebody write permission without Reaper mission so all they can do is they can write to that file again you don't see that very often but it's good to remember that it's there you can do them and then you have execute X cube which is signified by an X so execute means that if the file is a script like a dot PHP script or a Java Script or an ASP script or something like that that this gives you permission to actually execute that script so if you don't have permission to execute the script this script will know not work it will not run this permission becomes much more important when you get into things like web administration where you have a website so you want certain people be into X cube scripts and other people do not execute cube scripts this doesn't come around very often with simple file sharing because files are files they're not executables so but you should just keep this in mind so when you look at a directory listing what you will normally see is our W X if somebody if you look at a directory listing and it says RW x by the file it means you have read write and execute permission if you see our W nothing that means you have readwrite permission if you see blank W nothing it means you have write permission if you see our blank blank then it means you only have read permission so these are the basic permissions that you're going to run across no matter what operating system you use read very simple you can read the file write means you can write to the file you can edit the file execute means if it's a script you can run that script again in simple file sharing you're not going to run into the execute problem very often because you don't have anything to execute right once you start programming things like scripts or get more common to more complicated web administration this can be very useful because again you can run you can have them be able to write to a file but not read the file so if you just want them to submit data this this would be very useful to have them have a write permission without the read permission yeah yeah great so and then if you're looking at it it's r WX it's always in this order for permissions so you'll see RW blank means read/write blank W blank means write are blank blank means means just read and then finally as I said in the beginning the person who is allowed to give permissions to a file or folder is the owner of the folder normally the or over the folder is whoever created the folder but also in most operating systems you can transfer owner to another person or to another user account I should say so so just remember that the owner of the file or folder is the one that can create these permissions and and you can transfer that ownership to another person so so that's that's permissions for so now before we get into to the the overall technologies of where you decide how you're going to share files we need to go over some of the philosophies or the I guess the underlying thoughts about how you share files so the first way that you can share a file is using something called SMB s/m this means a server message block SMB is used when you are sharing files on a local network so this is the file sharing that you are probably most familiar with this is where somebody has a Windows XP computer they share a file or folder and then you access that file or folder from another computer on the network so you're able to open up the document your go to whatever permissions you have you're able to do that to the document SMB has a couple of benefits a couple of not-so-good things when you open up a file using SMB so it's on the local network you just go to the share folder and you open up that shared file when you do that that file locks so you are the only person that is able to edit the file if you have the right permission we're going to assume with all these that you have the right permission to not make this confusing so you have the ability to read and write to the file so when you open up the file you are opening up the original file nobody else can get in to the original file and if you make any changes all of those changes are automatically saved when you hit the Save button to that original file so it's all about the original file if another person tries to come in and open up that file while you're working on it they will be told they can open up a read-only version so they will have the ability to read the document but they will not be able to save changes back to that document this is very useful SMB on local networks this does not work very well over the Internet the speed is just not good enough and the problem is though with SMB is if a second person does open up and edit the file they're editing to a new file editing to a copy of so if you if you want to merge the two the two documents so you open the original and you're editing that your partner opens up a read-only version of the original and they headed it you actually have to go back and manually combine those two files because they are working with a copy that's the problem with SMB if you're the only one that's working on the file or only one person works on the file at a time SMB is very good because again you open up the original file and you're editing the original file if you have multiple people trying to edit the file it's just it's nOCA the next way to share files is by doing something called synchronization or sync what happens with synchronization is you go to the original file or folder and then this can be used on the internet or the local network sync works everywhere you go to the original file you actually when you start editing the original file you actually create a copy of it yourself it automatically creates a copy of that file when you get done changing that file it will ask you if you want to save the changes back to the original or not so we'll say the last time this file was modified the original file was modified this here this is your file that's when it was modified do you want to synchronize your changes back so it creates a copy in the first it creates it a copy automatically but then at the end if you want to synchronize the changes back it then automatically merges your copy with the original fun this can be very useful because you can use this for files that are up on the internet so you can actually download the file it's easier to work on you don't have to worry about you know your your your network connection dropping one of the problems that you can have this again goes to if multiple people are accessing and editing the same file is you create a copy of the original that somebody else creates a copy of the original so the original is here nobody's changing the original yeah but you two are still you're working on copies you're making your changes they're making their work their changes well then they may go back and synchronize and so the far the original file is now synchronized with them well you go back and you made all these changes but this the changes aren't done real-time so you don't know that the other person that changes so if you go back to synchronize you may overwrite what the other person did this is the problem with synchronization software depending on what synchronization software you use the there they do have tools to try to prevent this type of thing but but this is the main issue with with synchronization software I like using synchronization software for for my personal documents if only like one person is using the documents or two people are using the documents because you can synchronize your files and folders to to multiple different computers and if you're the only one ever editing them then you don't have to worry about this whole synchronization conflict issue so so that that's what synchronization it's good because you can use it over the internet and such but if you have multiple people using the same document you may end up overwriting each other and knowing most users they probably won't even notice the next way you can share files or folders is something called library software generically this software is a lot like synchronization and started getting used a lot in the multimedia world so when people are creating large websites you have multiple people editing those websites so some key some people edit the pictures some people edit the infrastructure of the website some people edit the video etc but you need to keep all those files in one single location so that if you go to preview the website that you can actually see it because everybody saved all these pictures and videos on their own desktop computers all the material will be there but it'd be very difficult to turn that into to a single website like this library software allows you to do is you have one server it's basically has its library software on it and people can check in and check out documents videos or whatever file that they're going to edit so they go to the server they find the document that they want and they create it'll create a copy onto their computer but what will happen is a little checkmark will get get pegged in the server and the server and it will say that this document has been checked out and so the only way somebody else can start editing that document is if you check it back in so basically library software allows you to check in and check out documents videos files whatever from this main server so everything stays on the server all the copies are there and everything but nobody else can edit that file until you've checked it back in again this library software is not used a lot of in most most businesses this is mainly used in the multimedia arena you know when people creating magazines websites etc though those are the people that use this a lot the final type of file sharing technology something called real-time collaboration real operation real-time collaboration this is what I was kind of talking about before it sounds like an amazingly wonderful idea that it sucks it's oh it's good on the drawing board is beautiful on the drawing board basically what real-time collaboration software allows is multiple people can open up the exact same document at the exact same time and they can all edit it at the exact same time so if somebody starts typing a new sentence that sentence every time they hit another letter will get added and everybody will see it in real-time collaboration most of the time for real-time collaboration both the file server or the wherever the document is stored and the the software that the people are using to edit the document have some type of communication technology so you can't just you can't just use Word and a file server and do this you you have to have multiple pockets of Technology working together but if you do have those bits of technology like I say everybody can open up the exact same document and everybody is actually editing it at the same time and everybody sees the edits at the same time so so it's not like SMB your sink or any of this where the edits can get lost or you can write over somebody everybody sees what everybody else is doing again this seems like a good idea seems like this is what you want um I think it's just just horrible it's just a pain in the butt um because you do you have multiple people all editing a document at the exact same time I mean you've been in conferences and meetings and you've seen you know your your work buddies try to work together I mean imagine them all like writing the document at the same time I mean it's hard enough getting people to write different parts of the document at the same time much less the document self but that's what real-time collaboration is so SMB is server message block this is what you are most likely used to again this is the gist a normal file sharing somebody shares a folder on Windows XP and you access it you can you actually edit the original file when you open it up and nobody else can edit the original file while you're editing so if they try to open the file they will get a read-only version you have synchronization what that's it what this means is the original stays wherever it's at you open up a copy of the original then when you are done editing it that copy is merged back to the original this is really really great if you if you only have one person working on the commit or if you if you have a good regime for how people open documents but remember if you have two people open a document at the same time one person may sync their changes back the other person will then overwrite what they did that that can be a real problem you have a library software again not used a lot in the normal world definitely used by artists this is where you have one file server you're able to check in and check out the files so so the original does stay on the server it's like synchronization but unlike synchronizations nobody else can open up that file until you're done with it and of course you have real-time communicate a collaboration this is where everybody can open up the document at the exact same time and they can literally work edit the document real-time and everybody sees their changes real-time and again sounds great on the drawing board I would never want to use it so so that's the basic technology now let's get into how to actually share some files so the first way you can you can share files with other people in your company your organization is through web and services yes just this is probably about the easiest way that you can share files and folders to to people that you need to share the files and folders to this is where normally you go to Google or you go to a company called Dropbox or you get an online file or folder and your files and folders are stored online so you you buy the service from GoDaddy or one in one or Dropbox all your files are stored online they have a way for you to be able to give permissions and access to those files and folders to other people so people may need to download special software or they may just have to go to a website and put in the username and password but all the permissions and all of that is done through the web of services this is a very simple way to share files and folders issues that you run into is when you when you if you do decide to start using web services many of the web services use something called FTP it's File Transfer Protocol which makes it difficult or I guess cumbersome to to edit and then save the files back up to their website so a lot of times you can download the file very easily or view the file very easily but in order to synchronize the changes back up on to the file server you may you may have to go through a lot of just just Magilla that's a pain in the butt you also have a synchronization with Web Services normally and and again like we talked about the synchronization before if the web services that you are using use synchronization is that this can be very useful again because you open up a copy of the original on your computer you can edit it and then synchronize it back up but again if you have multiple people working on the same file you may get some some weird things with that synchronization generally these web services are pretty inexpensive nowadays but when you if you decide to use this for your organization make sure you really understand the size limits of whatever product you buy many of the products nowadays give you 2 gigabytes or bits or or 5 gigs or maybe 10 gigs of space depending on the size of your company you may need a hundred or 500 gigs so so before you decide to forego your own server or store in any of the data on any of the computers locally in your in your office make sure that the web service that you're going with has enough storage and it's also not ludicrously expensive sometimes you know if you need a hundred gigs of storage up on a web service that might cost you one or two hundred dollars a month that's pretty expensive so Web Services I'm sure at this point you've seen these basically again companies like Dropbox Google Docs that kind of thing you just get a username and password you're able to create a folder up on the internet you can access that folder again either using a web browser or some type of software that's installed onto your computer make sure though you understand how you upload and download the files because if you if it uses FTP again that can be a pain in the butt what FTP means is you can open up so you create a copy of the file locally you open it up you edit it you actually have to save it locally and then re-upload it to the FTP server again it's not horrible but it's just a few other few extra steps that people may not want to take and again when you're dealing with employees a few extra steps that people don't want to take means a few extra steps that are not going to be taken so be careful with that synchronization all this process will be done automatically for you but that's web services the next way to share files is on a workgroup so basically all a workgroup is is is a bunch of computers connected on a local area network so imagine you have a switch so a switch is you know what what sends the network signal out to all the other computers and you have one computer here and you know one computer here in one computer here you know one computer here and let's say one computer here so you have five computers in this work room most operating systems work in a workgroup environment we are going to go into a few seconds domains where Microsoft works in but most was it windows allows you to do workgroups Mac allows you to do workgroups you X uses work groups Linux uses work rooms many times you're allowed to name the worker group so you will see like MS home if your MS home if you're using Microsoft Windows and you create a workroom within the Windows software you actually create a workgroup and then add yourself to it we will have a class on it it's pretty simple to do but the main thing to remember with workgroups is basically all it is is local computers on the network that can talk to each other the main thing with this is that every single computer on the network has its own security rules so this computer has its own security rules this computer has its own security rules this computer has its own security rules this computer has its own security rules and this computer has its own security rules so if you have a folder here on on this computer this computer will have access rules on how you're able to get to that floor so if you say Billy let's say we'll put Billy down here on computer one can read and write so are you but not execute so all of this would be written onto this computer this computers access Allah so if Billy tries to get on from computer one it goes here he puts it in his username and password if it's correct he's able to access this file now if the computer up here also wants Billy at computer one to be able to access a folder it also has to create its own access rule so it will create it'll say Billy computer one readwrite so every single computer in the workgroup has its own access rules this is this is this is important and if you if you get into a complicated network that this can cause real problems if you're only dealing with three or four computers on a network it's no big deal but if you start dealing with ten twenty a hundred computers everybody is trying to share information this can be a real hassle because every single computer on the network has its own security rules and you actually have to edit those security rules so if you have I don't know sue over here on computer - and you want her to be able to get to this folder this folder and this folder this means each computer will have to have an access rule for Sue at computer - to be able to get to those folders again this can be an administrative nightmare once you start getting the larger networks microsoft recommends you know when you do there mcse program or whatever that workgroups should only be up to ten computers they recommend that you maximize a ten computers it's kind of up to you but if you're doing a lot of file sharing that that's a lot of bad place to stop if you're dealing with the Microsoft world and most the other computer world this a worker group is going to be using that SMB protocol that server message block so when you actually open the file so billy opens this file he's actually opening the original file and if su try to go to it she will get a read-only version on the file so workgroups use SMB and every single computer on the network has its own access rules so now that we've talked about workgroups let's talk about domains domains or domain controllers can make your life a whole bunch easier and just yeah just makes life and life a lot easier so before when we're talking about the workgroup every single computer on the network you had to edit and create its own security rules for for how people or who could get into certain files and folders and do what to them basically what happens with a domain controller as you have your normal switch and you have your computer is just like before so just do for now over here you have the domain controller so the domain controller is responsible for giving people access to resources on the network this includes not just files but folders computers printers etc etc anything that can be shared on the network the security for it is controlled by this it's called a domain controller so what happens is when Billy on this computer logs in so so with if you have a normal workgroup computer you may have to log in or you may not it's whatever the permission is on that particular computer if you have a domain you have to login because what happens is Billy logs in his login credentials go to this date domain controller this domain controller looks through its security database and finds out what permissions Billy has on the network once it's figured out what permissions Billy has it then creates something called an access key and sends it back the Billy now that Billy has that key he can go to whatever resources he wants to on the network and simply be able to access them so for for all the the different files and folders that are shared on these computers instead of having to create individual security databases on the video computer they all simply share what is whatever is on the domain controller what makes the domain controller make your life even easier is that beyond simply giving you the access key so you don't have to create so many security databases you can also put people into groups so let's put Billy Billy sue and George into one group their God is going to be called Group one right well before when we had that workgroup if we wanted to give Billy and Sue and George permissions to a resource on a computer you would actually have to create pit permissions for Billy and for Sue and from George and if you wanted to do that on two computers that means you'd have to do Billy see one George and one Billie sue and Jordan the other if you want to do it on five computers that means you would actually have to sit down and write out these access rules 15-time well when you have a domain controller since the domain controller deals with security for everything you can put people into groups so Group one so if this computer up here wants to share a file or folder to Billie sue and George they can just share that file to group Group one and that's all they do instead of assigning permissions to everybody they just say to group one if Sue comes down here she logs in his computer she will get an access key from the domain controller and then she can go up to this computer since she's part of Group one she can simply do whatever her permissions are on that file or folder if George logs in here he can also get to the file or folder on Group one so the domain controller what happens and why you why you like domain controllers and they make your life easier is it gives you one central place to administer file permissions as will go into another classes things like security policies so if you have a workgroup every single computer on that network is responsible for its own security which doesn't seem like a bad thing again until you're getting the 10 or 20 computers I mean if you have to make a major change that means you have to sit down at every single computer and make that change what you can tell you which really does physically takes a lot of time to do if you have a domain controller on the network and you want to change security policies or if you want to change permissions you just go to this one domain controller and change the the the policies or permissions there so imagine before so we have group one Billy Sue and George if this was a work group let's say Billy Sue and George were given permissions to three different computers now imagine that George was demoted it wasn't fired let's just say he got drunk and he swatted somebody's butt and wasn't supposed to so he got demoted he got smacked so he's not now no longer allowed to see the same files and folders that Billy and Sewer he got he's getting his hands Mac he's not making as much money anymore if this a was a work group and you had three different computers with the permissions for George on them you would have to change your permission at this computer and this computer and this computer suit you would physically have to sit down and change the file permissions at each of these computers where if you just have Group one and that is on the domain controller all you have to do is sit down at the domain controller remove your just aim from this group and now he no longer has permission to get to the files and folders so this is why the administration really matters if you have a workgroup you have to sit down at each individual computer and do the editing if you have a domain controller you simply sit down on the domain controller you remove one name from a group and that's it done so again we are going to go over domain controllers and workgroups I just want to give you an idea of kind of how they work so this class hopefully gave you an overview and idea of the different ways that files and folders can be shared nowadays like I say there are multiple ways to share files and folders and so I don't want you thinking that again that you have to have a domain controller if you want to share files and folders to other people in your organization using Web Services might be fine for you you know maybe maybe a workgroup is okay maybe you do need a domain controller but these are all the different ways that you can share files and folders so people can get access to them we talked about the permissions today remember Windows if you get into Windows server administration I think they have like 15 different permissions now but the standard the stock standard permissions that everybody uses is read write and execute you know read is read write is write execute basically means you can execute a script so at this point you're probably not going to have to worry about execute remember these these are all separate permissions you can give so many permissions to write to a file without being able to read to it it sounds a little weird to you now but like I said when you get into more advanced administration that this this may actually be useful for you we've talked about different ways that data is shared we talked about SMB server message block this is again somebody goes to the shared file opens up the original file and that file is now locked to everybody else people can go to it but they will only be allowed to open a read-only version so the person opens the file originally they're working on the original file if they hit save everything gets saved back to that original file we talked about synchronization sync means you create a copy of the original and then when you are done and you like what you've done you then merge your copy to the original so so when you're actually doing this when you're editing there's two different documents that are open if you have multiple people all trying to edit the document at the same time this can be bad because people don't know what everybody else is doing so when they all go back to see this person will synchronize first then this person will synchronize and this personal synchronizing this personal synchronize you may end up with a colossal mess so be very very careful with synchronization we talked about the library software again this is not used for the most part in most companies but if you're dealing with like the multimedia professionals they use this kind of software so again they create a copy of the document but they actually check it out of the server nobody else can can mess with that document until they check it back in once it gets checked it back in somebody else can check it out they check it back in and somebody else can check it out and then we also had we talked about real time collaboration again I think this sounds great on the drawing board in the real world it would be brutal you'd have to be working with much better people than I have ever worked with for for real time to work well I think but basically what real time is everybody opens up the same document at the same time if one one person makes a change everybody sees that change so people are literally working on the original document at the exact same time if it works for you it works for you I'm not going to sell with any client I then we talk how are we actually then going to share these files we talk about Web Services this is very simple again you go to go daddy.com and get an online online file folder or you go to a company called Dropbox etc basically your files and folders are stored online and you use their system to create permissions and such to those files and folders people are then either able to access the files or folders through a web browser and they just log in and can connect to it or through software that is installed on their computer there's two again as I talked about there's two different ways that the software web services usually works for sharing files one is FTP one is some type of synchronization program if you're using FTP remember you open up the file you save the file locally and then you have to upload it back up to to their system this doesn't sound bad until you're dealing with people in the real world again the more steps the more manual steps you put into a process the more likely it is that employees aren't going to do it and frankly if the employees don't do it then why bother the synchronization software essentially does a lot of what the FTP software does but it does it all automatically so it creates a copy locally when you hit save locally it then closes it and then re-upload up that that data automatically emerges your your changes to the original again this is better because it does it automatically and I swear to you automatic is better we talked about working groups so work groups generally use SMB that server message block to share the files so so if I want to open up a file on another computer I actually open up that original file etc as we talked about before the main thing with work groups is every single computer on the network has its own security policies so if you want to share a file with Billy and Sue and George on this computer then you have to create a policy for Billy and Sue and George if you want to share a different file tips billing and Sue and George over here you have to create again security policy Billy and Sue and George again anybody you want to get permissions to a file you have to go to each individual computer and make those changes a small network where you don't do a lot of changes this might be fine because again work groups are a whole lot less expensive than networks with domains on them you know a server a domain controller is going to cost you a few thousand dollars so if you have a small network you don't do very many can you just a working group might be the perfect fit for you on the other hand if you have a network that has 10 or more computers and and a lot of things are going on if you have that domain controller that domain controller acts as the single place for all your security your permissions everything so people logged in when they log in their credentials are given to the server the server gives them an access key and then they can use that little access key to get to whatever files or folders or resources they need to on the network so so again like I said he if George did something stupid he got fired etc instead of going to each individual computer and having to remove his permissions to a file or folder you just go to that one domain controller and erase them so basically you can either go you can either take two minutes and erase his name out of one record on the domain controller or you can go to this desk and fix it in this desk in this desk in this desk in this steps so let me think about think about the time sitting this this process here if you have a domain controller this process will take two minutes if you have a workgroup and that person has very many permissions on very many computers that would be a couple of hours because you've got to move the person so if it's secretary or four assistants working at the computer you have to ask them to move then you have to login as the administrator or whatever then you have to remove the permission that that really really can take take a lot of time so this is the introductory class on how you share files and folders um it's we have a lot more to go I've realized my MCSE for Windows 2000 way back one was a hundred and twenty hours so this this is this is a first step we have many many many many more steps to go so if if you don't feel like you've learned that learned enough about sharing files right now it's probably because you haven't again we're still in the introduction phase of this whole Trek as you know I'm Eli the computer guy we're going to be digging digging more into this very shortly so I hope to see you at another class

Channel: Eli the Computer Guy

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Keywords: intro, file, share, 720p

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Length: 44min 1sec (2641 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 17 2011