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Throttle Shared Users With OS X — Is It Possible?

Posted by timothy on from the throttle-the-snot-instead dept.

whisper_jeff writes "I work in a design studio where the production director is also the owner's son (translation = he can do no wrong). He is fond of accessing a designer's computer via filesharing and working directly on files off of the designer's computers rather than transferring the files to his computer to work on them there. In so doing, he causes the designer's computer to grind to a near-halt as the harddrive is now tasked with his open/save requests along with whatever the designer is doing. Given that there is no way he's going to change his ways (since he doesn't see anything wrong with it...), I was wondering if there was a way to throttle a user's shared access to a computer (Mac OSX 10.5.8) so that his remote working would have minimal impact on our work. Google searches have revealed nothing helpful (maybe I should Bing it... :) so I was hoping someone with more technical expertise on Slashdot could offer a suggestion."

3 of 403 comments (clear)

  1. Suggestive title by Saishuuheiki · · Score: 1, Redundant

    While it is indeed possible to throttle OS X users with a strong grip or a length of rope, it's quite illegal at least in the US

  2. I don't see how it's possible with OSX. by feepness · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Rather I would recommend your bare hands or a short length of rope.

  3. ipfw? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 0, Redundant

    You could try ipfw's rate limiting features. With ipfw you can create "pipes" of specified capacity and attach them to ports, limiting speed for activity on that port.

    I don't know, though, if that will still work with Apple's application-level firewall in the mix. I'm not up on the details; but my impression is that that one has a habit of being extremely deferential to Apple-signed binaries.