Services for Macintosh

Windows NT Server's Services for Macintosh integrates Macs with NT. Most enterprises have a few Macs that run applications ranging from graphics and illustration packages to word processing and relational databases. Services for Macintosh turns your NT server into a file-and-print server for those Macs: You can store Mac documents on your NT server and print them to an AppleTalk printer or server-attached printer via NT's print queues. To ease the integration of your AppleTalk and NT networks, Services for Macintosh also provides AppleTalk routing and Microsoft's encrypted authentication service.

Unfortunately, NT 4.0 does not provide a single interface for managing Services for Macintosh. Using a combination of Server Manager, File Manager (yes, it's still in NT 4.0), the Network Control Panel applet, a MacFile Control Panel applet, and optionally a command-line utility, you can configure all aspects of Services for Macintosh. File Manager is the only GUI utility where you can set Mac file associations. By default, the Start Menu does not reference File Manager when you install NT Server 4.0. To access File Manager, click Run from the Start Menu, enter winfile, and click OK. If you've already installed Services for Macintosh, you see a new menu option, MacFile, in File Manager, as in Screen 1. From this menu, you can configure aspects of the file system that Services for Macintosh uses.

From these utilities, you can install and configure Services for Macintosh and AppleTalk routing (Network Control Panel), create new Mac-accessible volumes (Server Manager and File Manager), set Mac application-specific file associations (File Manager), and see which Mac users are connected to your server and what files they have open (MacFile Control Panel applet). The MacFile Control Panel applet also lets you set some general service options for Services for Macintosh, such as which authentication method to use, how many users can connect to the server, and what name the server appears as on your Mac client's Chooser.

Let's examine the features of Services for Macintosh, how to install and configure file-and-print services (including AppleTalk routing and Microsoft authentication), and how to connect to an NT server from your Mac. I'll also review some rules about Mac file naming on NT servers, and how to keep it from getting ugly.

Services for Macintosh Features
Services for Macintosh provides file-and-print services to your Mac clients. With these services installed, your NT 4.0 server emulates an AppleShare server. To your Macs, your NT server is an AppleShare server. When you install Services for Macintosh, you see two new services in the Services Control Panel: File Server for Macintosh, which provides file services, and Print Server for Macintosh, which handles print serving functions to the Mac.

To provide Mac file services, you use Server Manager or File Manager to create Mac-accessible volumes on your NT server's hard drives. These volumes are NT folders that must exist on an NT File System (NTFS) partition that is accessible to both PC and Mac clients. Because Macs use different file permissions for AppleShare resources, Services for Macintosh includes options in both Server Manager and File Manager to manage these volumes and assign Mac-specific file permissions to NTFS files and folders.

Two configuration options support Mac printing services. The first is to use NT Server's printer utilities to capture a networked, AppleTalk-based Postscript printer. This option lets you spool print jobs from the NT Server print spooler. Most Macs run a local print spooler, so you need to disable this feature on your clients if you want NT Server to capture your AppleTalk printers.

The second print option lets you connect any printer to the serial or parallel ports of your NT Server. You can use this configuration to share the printer with both PC and Mac clients. If the printer doesn't use Postscript, the Macintosh Print Server will convert the job to the printing language the printer supports.

Installing File-and-Print Services
Anyone who's ever had to install and configure Novell NetWare for Macintosh NetWare loadable modules (NLM-an NLM is equivalent to an NT service) with its cryptic load commands, will love the speed at which you can get Services for Macintosh running on NT Server 4.0. All the GUI-based utilities are self-explanatory and include good context-sensitive Help.

In just a few steps, you can install Services for Macintosh, including configuring AppleTalk Phase 2 routing. From the Control Panel, select Services, and click Add. Scroll down the list, highlight Services for Macintosh, and click OK. When the system prompts you for the location of your NT Server distribution files, enter the location and click Continue.

After NT copies the appropriate distribution files, click Close in the Network dialog. The system updates the network bindings and prompts you to enter the default zone and routing information for the default network adapter installed on your server. Screen 2 shows the dialog for configuring this information. If you have multiple adapters installed, you need to configure each one for AppleTalk routing. If your NT Server connects to a network that has an AppleTalk router already defined, the system automatically locates the default zone for that network adapter. When you finish configuring Services for Macintosh, click OK and restart your server so the changes can take effect.

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