Sams Teach Yourself MCSE Windows NT Server 4 in 14 Days
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): David Schaer, et al
ISBN: 0672311283
Publication Date: 12/15/97

8.6. Administering Shares

Now that you know how to set up shares and set permissions on them, next look at how to manage them. How do you see what is shared on a particular computer? How do you see who is accessing those shares? How do you handle management of shares?

8.6.1. Monitoring Shares with Server Manager

The tool that you use to manage all these issues is Server Manager. It is located in the Administrative Tools folder under Programs on the Start menu. Figure 8.8 shows the Server Manager.

You will see several shares named C$, D$, IPC$, and ADMIN$ from within Server Manager. These shares are hidden administrative shares created by the system.

Figure 8.8.  The Server Manager.

Server Manager enables you to see who is allowed to be a member of your domain by showing you all the computer accounts. Remember that these accounts are required only for NT-based computers. Because most, if not all, of your servers will be NT Server-based, they will all show up here. To see who is using a machine and what they are doing, simply select the computer in question, click the Computer menu, and select Properties to display the dialog box shown in Figure 8.9.

Figure 8.9.  Properties of the selected computer.

You can also access a computer’s properties by double-clicking it in Server Manager.

As Figure 8.9 shows, there are two main ways that you can see who is accessing the server: You can look by Users or by Shares. The Users button lets you see all of the connected users. When you click any given user, any shares they are accessing are displayed on the bottom half of the screen (see Figure 8.10).

Figure 8.10.  The connected users and what shares are being accessed.

The other method of looking at what is happening is by share. Click the Shares button to see a list of all the shares on that computer. Click the desired share to see a list of who is using that share. This enables you to see the same data as in the user’s dialog box, but from the opposite direction as shown in Figure 8.11.

Figure 8.11.  The shared resources.

You can disconnect either individual users or all users at once from either dialog box; however, this is not the recommended method because users might have data files open, and this would lose or corrupt data. Use this only as a last resort. Simply disconnecting a user accomplishes very little because the client can reconnect as needed.

If you want to prevent the user from reconnecting to the share (as well as all other users connecting to any new share), you should pause the Server service (either by using Control Panel/Services, or Server Manager/Services, selecting the Server service and clicking Pause). (See Figure 8.12.) After you pause the Server service, disconnect the user or all users. Remember, though, this can result in loss or corruption of data.

Figure 8.12.  The service applet.

You can also share and stop sharing folders from Server Manager by going to the Computer menu and selecting Shared Directories. In the Shared Directories dialog box (see Figure 8.13) you will see all the shared directories. You can modify existing ones, create new ones, or stop sharing existing ones.

Use this method to remotely manage shares as well as to create them.

Figure 8.13.  All shares.

8.7. Printing Terminology

Printing has historically been one of the major problem areas for network administrators. With NT Server 4.0, Microsoft has significantly simplified several of the major print operations that must be performed. However, with the simplification of printing comes both more print options and new print terminology.

Before examining this chapter further, be sure you are familiar with a few basic terms. Pay special attention to terminology that is applied differently by other vendors.

A printer is defined as the software interface that resides between the application and the physical print device.

A print device is commonly called a printer in most other network environments. The print device is the physical device that actually produces the printed page.

A print device is considered a local print device when it is directly connected to the computer providing the print services. If the print device is connected to the network directly, it is considered a remote print device.

These items certainly are not a complete list of the NT printing terms, but they are enough to start you off as you get into the details of printing.

8.8. Creating a Printer

You add a printer both to create a new printer that will control either a local or network print device attached to the local computer, and to connect to a print device managed by a remote print server.

8.8.1. Running the Add Printer Wizard

Run the Add Printer Wizard to walk you through the basic installation and configuration of a printer.

The first choice to make when running the wizard is whether the printer being installed will access a print device managed by the local computer or one managed by another system, a print server (see Figure 8.14).

When the selected location of the print device is My Computer you must next specify on which port or ports the print device or devices are located.

Figure 8.14.  The opening screen of the Add Printer Wizard.

8.8.2. Selecting the Printer Ports

To understand printer ports, just remember that the printer is merely the software interface which connects to the print devices. The selected ports are where the printer will send print jobs. The ports can be local ports attached to the computer, as is the case with parallel and serial connections, or they can point to remote network printer devices such as Hewlett-Packard Jet Direct print boxes or even other shared network printers. In Figure 8.15 the printer is configured to print to LPT1.

Figure 8.15.  The printer is configured to print to LPT1.