> absolutely no idea what any of that means. What is a "Domain
> Environment"? What does "create an account in the domain"
> mean? What is a "resource provider"? How do you "create a
> local user on the CF server"?
>
> I'm on XP as noted. I don't use any account or password. (Or
> maybe I do and it starts automatically, I have no idea. How
> would I even check?) The db is on another computer. I try to
> access it using that computer's name and the shared folder
> name (just as I would enter in windows Exporer to get there)
> but it won't work in the cf admin without error.
>
> If you could explain in plain English more along the lines of
> "Click x, write y in the field named z" etc., it would be
> much appreciated.
Unfortunately, if you want to manage servers, you'll need some knowledge of
the operating system and general environment to manage them effectively, or
even to understand how to start looking for solutions to problems you're
having.
That said, I'll take a crack at answering your questions.
First, whenever you do anything in Windows NT/2000/XP/2003, you are using an
account and password, whether you know it or not. Every process within
Windows runs within a specific user account or security context. Your XP
machine is configured to log you in automatically, which is why you don't
have to log in manually. Everything within Windows relies on user rights,
however. Every file has permissions set upon it, every registry key has
permissions, and so on. Every time a program attempts to use a file, the
operating system checks the permissions of the file before allowing the
program to continue.
Second, the CF server runs as a service. Services are Windows programs that
run independently of the desktop. They typically start when the machine
itself is started. Each service runs within a specific user account or
security context (a security context is kind of like a generic user
account). By default, most services run as SYSTEM, which is a security
context that corresponds to the operating system itself. This SYSTEM
"account" has rights to do practically anything on the machine, but doesn't
have any rights to access network resources.
If you want CF to be able to access network resources, you'll need to run it
within a user account that has appropriate rights to those resources, as
well as appropriate rights to whatever local files and resources it needs.
Third, when one Windows machine can access another's shares or printers,
this is done through Windows Networking. There are two ways Windows
Networking can be configured. Windows machines can be part of a workgroup,
which is really just an arbitrary collection of machines who choose to use
the same workgroup name, or they can be part of a domain. A domain is a
managed environment consisting of one or more domain controllers which are
in charge of managing domain user accounts, and any number of domain
members, whose resources may be available to those user accounts. Domains
have their own user accounts, which can be used at any domain member to log
into the domain itself. Once logged into the domain, an account will
typically have preassigned rights to domain shares and the like. Domains
make it easy to create user accounts with rights to many machines' shares at
once - this is a bit more difficult in a workgroup. Even within a domain,
though, each machine has its own local user accounts as well, and the SYSTEM
"account" on each machine won't have any rights to domain resources on other
machines.
It sounds to me like you don't have a domain, though. The easiest way to
solve your immediate problem - although not necessarily the best way - would
be to create a new account within the Administrators group on the machine
running CF and configure CF to run within this account, and to create an
account with the same username and password on the other machine hosting the
database, and to make sure that this account has rights to access the files
in question.
Here are the steps to configure CF to run as a local user within the
Administrators group:
1. From the machine running CF, open a command prompt.
2. Type "compmgmt.msc" and press Enter.
3. Select the "Users" folder within "Local Users and Groups".
4. Go to the "Action" menu and select "New User".
5. Type in the new username and password, and clear the "User must change
password at next logon" checkbox.
6. Check the "User cannot change password" and "Password never expires"
checkboxes.
7. Close this dialog, then right-click on the new user and select
"Properties".
8. Click on the "Member Of" tab, click on the "Add..." button and add
"Administrators".
9. At the bottom of the Computer Management interface, click the plus sign
in front of "Services and Applications".
10. Click on "Services".
11. Find the CF server service - the name of this service will vary
depending on how you installed CF.
12. Right-click on the service and select "Properties".
13. Click on the "Log On" tab, and enter the user account information from
step 5 above.
14. Click "OK" to close the dialog, then right-click on the CF service and
select "Restart".
You will then need to create a user on the other machine with rights to
access that file, and ensure that the user account on the first machine can
successfully access the file on the other machine. I'm not going to describe
that process step-by-step - you can probably figure it out after you do the
above steps. If not, let us know.
Finally, I would recommend that you simply put the database on the CF
server. Trying to access a database file over the network is generally very
bad for performance, among other things.
Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software
http://www.figleaf.com/
phone: 202-797-5496
fax: 202-797-5444
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