How to Log In and Turn on File Sharing in Lion Server

By John Rizzo from Mac OS X Lion Server For Dummies

If you’re logging in to your Lion Server for the first time or if you’re configuring it remotely, you may have to log in to the Server app before turning on file sharing. Here’s how:

Launch the Server app from the Dock.
If your server doesn’t appear in the sidebar under Hardware, choose Manage→Connect to Server.

If your server is listed under Hardware, then you’re already logged in and don’t need to do anything else.
Select a server from the Choose a Mac dialog and click the Continue button.

If you’re running the Server app from your server, it will be listed as This Mac. To log in to another Mac on the network, select Other Mac.
In the login dialog that appears, type a name and password and type the server’s DNS name or its IP address in the Server field.

The username and password are those of the administrator account, which is the account you created when you installed the server.

If you chose This Mac in Step 3, the Server app enters the hostname for you.
Click the Connect button.

Once you’re logged in, you can turn on file sharing using the Server app:
Click the File Sharing icon.
If the File Sharing switch is set to Off, click it to turn it on.

Several share points have been created already:

Backups: This appears if you’ve enabled Time Machine backup in the Server app. It’s set for access by Macs because Time Machine is a Mac-only feature.
Groups: When you create a new group in the System app’s Group pane and select the Give This Group a Shared Folder check box, a shared folder is created inside the Group folder. The folder is named after the group, and the users in the group have access to their group folder.
Public: This is a folder that administrators can use to distribute files to users. Members of the default Workgroup group can read and write to this shared folder. Other users can open items in the Public folder and copy items from it, but they can’t put files and folders into it.

Some services will create their own share points when turned on. For example, the Shared share point was created by Podcast Producer (activated with Server Admin). NetBoot will also create share points here when activated.

Keep in mind that these default folders are all located on the startup drive. It’s a good idea to keep shared files on another storage device, such as another partition, a second hard drive, or RAID storage.