I’ve set up a lab using an xserve, LDAP for the logins, and a number of shared folders with varying privileges on them. Everything else I need works OK, and I want to use the Simple Finder.

I’m working at a college, and what I want to do is to have various course folders which contain read-only versions of handouts, course info, and resources; these are on the xserve.

There is one thing that’s stopping me; there doesn’t seem to be a way to allow access via the Simple Finder; I can allow the full finder and then the students can use ‘connect to server’ and open the folders there. But what I want is to provide them with a shortcut to this on the dock which will mean I can use the simple finder.

I did originally use automounts for these, making them automount at login, and create a shortcut to the automount folder on the dock, but this meant that the privileges were not preserved, and any user could add/delete/alter any file in any of the folders.

Once this is done, I really want to be able to apply it to all the students via the ‘preferences’ section of WGM, by applying it to my ‘all_students’ group where all their other settings are managed.

I’d really like to stick with the Simple Finder as everything else works OK with it, just this one thing is the problem.