[Chanslor]

I am using OS 10.2.8 and want to share some large files with a relative, who is using OS 9.2, over the Internet.
I have tried using Personal Web Sharing, and can share files in /Library/WebServer/Documents/ with other computers on my home network, but I haven't figured out how to share those files with someone outside my home. I also set up a personal web site with Earthlink, and can access the files via that website from other computers on my network, but they are not accessible from outside the network unless I upload them to the website, and the file sizes exceed my website's size limit.
Is there a way to set up direct Internet access to some of my files for someone far away?
Thanks.

[dcipjr]

Personal Web Sharing basically sets your computer up as a web server. You basically can use it to run your own web page, although you can certainly use it for file sharing, too. It doesn't work like normal file sharing, per se, but it would most likely suffice for what you need.
I'm pretty sure, though, that you don't store the files in the location you specified.
Turn Personal Web Sharing on, then go to your user folder. Then open "Sites". Any files you want to share have to go in there. Then, your relative has to go to your site over the internet and download the file.
For example, if you want to share a file called "picture.jpg", you'd first have to enable Web Sharing, then move "picture.jpg" into your Sites folder.
Then, your relative would have to go to http://youripaddress/~yourshortuser[u]name/picture.jpg.

You can get your external IP address by visiting a site such as http://www.whatismyip.com
Try that!
Good luck!

[Chanslor]

I neglected to mention that my computer & network are behind a router.
But I did use the address: http://your[/u]ipaddress/ (obtained from http://www.whatismyip.com as you suggested) from another computer on the network, and was able to access files in my /Library/WebServer/Documents/ folder.
When I tried going to http://youripaddress/~yourshortusername/ I got a browser error message that "You don't have permission to access /~yourshortusername/ on this server." Haven't figured out how to correct that.
Haven't yet been able to try from a computer outside my network.
Thanks for the help.

[sjbartnik]

Your problem with access to your computer from outside your network is likely due to the router.
When you want to access your services from outside your network, you need to tell your router which computer to forward requests to.
So for example, using your personal web sharing option -- when you turn on web sharing, your computer listens for HTTP requests on port 80. If you have your Apple firewall turned on in System Preferences, it opens port 80 for requests and when another computer on your network makes an HTTP request to your computer on port 80, your computer responds by delivering the content.
The problem is that when you try to access your computer's web services from outside your own personal network, the router is blocking access to port 80 on your machine. So you need to configure your router to pass HTTP requests on port 80 on to your computer instead of just dropping them. Usually this is done in the router configuration utility or web page in a section called Port Mapping.
What you want to do is tell the router to take incoming requests on port 80 and send them to your computer's IP address (which can be found in the Network section of System Preferences).
To access your computer's web services from outside your personal network, you will have to navigate to your PUBLIC IP address, which will be different than the IP address your computer has in System Preferences.
What I mean is that your IP in System Preferences might be something like 192.168.x.x or 10.0.1.x, but that's not an IP address you can navigate to from outside your personal network, that's just the one assigned to you by your router.
Your public IP address is the one assigned to you by your internet service provider, and if you don't know what it is you can always find it in your router config web page (usually listed as WAN IP or something similar).
So once you have port 80 mapped to your computer's local IP address, then give your friends/family members your public IP and tell them to type that into their web browser and they should be all set.

[Chanslor]

Thanks for your very helpful reply.
I configured my router to permit HTTP access via Port 80. Now, web access at my IP address is available to my files at /Library/WebServer/Documents/
For some reason, access is still denied to the Sites folder in my home folder. The browser displays the following message:
-----------------------------------------------
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /~yourshortuser_name/ on this server.
Apache/1.3.29 Server at g3.localPort80
-------------------------------------------------------
So, I can share files in /Library/WebServer/Documents/ but not in /home/Sites/
Don't know why.
Thanks.

[sjbartnik]

I don't know why you would be getting that error message for your Sites folder.
That should work when personal web sharing is turned on. It sounds like the permissions on that folder may be incorrect, you might want to try running Repair Permissions in Disk Utility.
I'm not sure what else could be causing the problem unless you have been playing around with the httpd.conf file and messed something up.

[Chanslor]

I did repair permissions, but that didn't help.
At least I can share from one of two locations.
Appreciate the help.