OS X has two main levels of file-level credential control:
Right now, it sounds like your wife has "ownership" of the dropbox folder, much to your frustration.
To rectify this, you will want to use the Users and Groups preference panel to either
- (if everyone who uses the computer can have access to the dropbox folder) proceed to the last step, using the everyone access control group.
- (if you have multiple people using the computer, but only you and your wife can have access to the dropbox folder) create a new group, perhaps called Dropbox, and add you and your wife's accounts to this group.
- (if both you and your wife understand the power of being Administrator, and both you and your wife would be the only Administrator on this computer) add both your and your wife's account to the Administers group.
- Set the permissions on the Dropbox folder to give full control to this group from 1 through 3.
- In Finder, select the Dropbox folder and press CMD-I (Get Info).
- You might need to unlock the panel if you see the locked padlock in the lower right corner. Click on the Lockard provide an Administrator password.
- In the Permissions section (towards the bottom)
- if you see the group already in the list, set the permission to Read and Write
- if you don't see your group in the list, click the + button on the groups side, select and add your group and set it to Read and Write
- Be sure to set the drop list at the very bottom to Apply to enclosed items BEFORE you close the Get Info tab.
Choose wisely, but this process will eliminate your having to authenticate every time you want to use Dropbox.
regarding getting your SMB sharing connection from linux working...
Samba no more, mount.cifs needs extra options, "nounix,sec=ntlmssp"
Don't use the linux gui to connect, have bro open a terminal and try these commands
(and dig my ascii art!)
=^..^= `·.¸¸ ><((((º>.·´¯`·><((((º>
amitsbrother@linux:~$
amitsbrother@linux:~$ sudo apt-get install cifs-utils
...
amitsbrother@linux:~$ mkdir /mnt/mavericks_smb
amitsbrother@linux:~$ mount.cifs //172.17.8.212/smb_share /mnt/mavericks_smb/ -o user=amitsbrother,password=trustno1,nounix,sec=ntlmssp
amitsbrother@linux:~$
amitsbrother@linux:~$ mkdir /mnt/mavericks_smb_dup
amitsbrother@linux:~$ mount -t cifs //172.17.8.212/smb_share /mnt/mavericks_smb-dup -o username=amitsbrother,password=trustno1,nounix,sec=ntlmssp
Once this is working, you can create a script for your brother to automatically mount when it is executed from the gui. Basically, the script is just the mount point creation, and the cifs connection to the smb server... so 2 or 3 lines including the shebang.
Make sharing work now with no passwords
To make it super simple, I'd enable web sharing on the Mac, and put the files you want to share to the Linux box in a folder in ~/Sites/a_folder/ . Then give your brother the address that it tells is your personal web sharing address in the Sharing Preferences pane when you enabled Web Sharing. Tell your brother to open a browser and put in that address; it will give him a directory listing as long as there is no index.html file in there. He can download files with his browser. This is one way sharing, from the Mac to the linux box, and will work fine as long as there are no files over 4GB (unless apache fixed that issue and didn't tell me about it). I believe directory listing is enabled by default on the Mac apache2 server.
To share in the other direction, from linux to Mac, you could do the same from the Linux box:
sudo apt-get install apache2
You can enable directory listings on the Linux apache2 server with instructions here. Those instructions inadvertantly also cover how to get the apache2 server up and running. Then you need the ip address of the Linux box, and the relative location from the apache root to see the files in your Mac's browser.
This shouldn't take 5 minutes to set up 2 x 1-way sharing through browsers on both boxes, and relieves you from hacing to trouble-shoot the slightly more complex task of installing and configuring netatalk or running SMB sharing from the mac and getting the linux client to mount it, which isn't always a "it just works" situation, like running 2 apache2 servers is.
Best Answer
When you connect to your computer (presumably) as yourself you will see absolutely everything on the computer as you are the owner. If you want people to connect to your computer and only see certain folders you will have to create local users that only have access to the folders that you assign them rights to.
It works the same way on Windows and Linux: you control access to folders (and the files within them) by assigning various users specific rights to specific folders.
Let's say you have two folders on your Mac "Accounting" and "Pictures." You only want your sister to access the Accounting folder because she takes care of your finances and that is where you put the spreadsheets and receipts that enumerate your finances and expenses. So you create an account for "sister" on your Mac and add her to the list of users who have access to that folder (which will be you (the owner of the Mac) and your sister).
But you want your brother, mom and dad to view the pictures and only the pictures. So you create three accounts (called brother, mom, dad) and add them to the list of users that have access to that folder.
Each user needs their own password (which you assign when you create the account) and a username which can be as above or uses their name, your choice.
And then when they need to access the files they log in with their username and password and only have access to the folders that you assigned them rights to.
That is a "10 mile view" of file sharing. I've not gone into details as there are lots of tutorials out there (you will have to learn how to use Google for this) that tell you in detail how to do file sharing on the Mac. But this gives you an outline of the process.
For a newbie it is annoyingly complicated, for someone who does system administration for a living, it's second nature and easy.