Scenario 3: Creating unsafe scratch folders for simple file sharing

A typical example when Fork Server Helper can be useful in a protected network where files a freely shared among a small workgroup is shown in the following picture:

Here, two users known to the network as users A and B want to both work on a file lying inside a shared folder on a Mac OS X file server. We assume the workflow among those users demands the following steps:

1. User A creates the file.
2. User B should review the file's contents and make changes if necessary.
3. User A gets the modified file back, archives it into his own personal folder and removes it from the server.

Depending on what software products are used to create and change the file, this scenario may cause a problem: User B is able to open file created by user A but she may not be able to write the changes back in step (2) because the file is owned by A and B doesn't have write permission. Note that this problem does not occur when either a network protocol is used that was designed for this kind of unsafe file sharing (for example WebDAV which is fully supported by Mac OS X), or A and B use software products that offer to set permission options when saving files. Unfortunately, very few Mac OS X applications support this kind of options because general permission settings were unknown in previous Macintosh operating systems.

Fork Server Helper assists you in solving the problem: Create a special shared folder on the Mac OS X file server that is used for file exchange between A and B. Then run Fork Server Helper to monitor this folder with the option Modify permission settings in specified folders. The appropriate permission settings, e.g. general write permission for a user group with A and B as members, will be set automatically in specified intervals.

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