FileMaker Extra: Configuring External Authentication Servers for Mac OS X

To use external server authentication, FileMaker Server must be set to use FileMaker and External Server accounts for Client Authentication. On Mac OS X, you can use either local accounts and groups that reside on the machine that FileMaker Server is running on, or domain accounts and groups. You should consult with your IT personnel in charge of security to determine which option would be preferable in your particular case. Generally, if your organization has centralized control of user accounts and passwords, that information is maintained on a domain server. If login information has not been centralized organization-wide, but you'd still like to maintain account information outside of FileMaker, you can set that up on the machine on which FileMaker is running.

If you happen to be the person responsible for setting up users and groups, you should know that you can maintain this information on either a Mac OS X Server machine or just a machine running regular Mac OS X.

FileMaker Server can run on both Mac OS X Server and the standard version of Mac OS X. Depending on which OS you're on, you need to use different tools to set up user accounts and groups. Mac OS X Server has a tool called the Workgroup Manager that enables you to maintain users, groups, and group membership. You can also use the command line, but it's much simpler to use Workgroup Manager.

The standard version of Mac OS X doesn't come with Workgroup Manager. If you don't use the command line, the usual way to maintain accounts on a non-server version of Mac OS X is to open System Preferences and use the Accounts tool to set up and maintain new accounts. The Accounts tool doesn't allow you to set up groups, however. If you launch Mac OS X's directory system utility NetInfo Manager (found in the Utilities directory), you can actually see users and groups, and group memberships, but it's not a tool for administering user and group memberships.

NOTE

If you have Mac OS X Server, it comes with a set of Admin Tools that can be installed on a non-server version of Mac OS X, but the tools talk only to a copy of Mac OS X Server elsewhere on the network and can't be used to administer the local machine.

Because FileMaker relies on group membership for external server authentication purposes, this situation is problematic for those who aren't command-line savvy.

Fortunately, there's a donation-ware product called SharePoints (http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/) that allows you to set up groups on the standard version of Mac OS X. Special thanks to Jonathan Reff for turning us on to this utility. It's so easy to use we won't even describe how to go about it, although you can get an idea of what it looks like in Figure 12.41. The point is that if you want to do external server authentication using local accounts and groups on a standard copy of Mac OS X, you can.

Figure 12.41. SharePoints enables you to administer group assignments on Mac OS X.

None of this is necessary on Windows servers because you can use the regular account administration tools to set up users and groups.