Dec 16, '03 10:56:00AM • Contributed by: iRideSnow
Apple promotes the iDisk as a way to "store files remotely" or "share files that are too big to email". It's also used as the location for storing your Address Book, iCal and Safari Bookmarks for use with iSync. This hint pertains to the "store files remotely" feature of iDisk, which Apple does not really elaborate on to any great degree.
I have two Macs: a G5 and a TiBook. My G5 (for obvious reasons) stays at home. My TiBook goes with me to work. One minor annoyance is that some things get out of sync between these two machines. I'll use two examples in this hint: NetNewsWire and MacJournal. NetNewsWire is a very well done RSS newsreader client. It's what I use to read articles from Slashdot, O'Reilly MacDevCenter and, of course, MacOSXHints, among others. MacJournal is (duh) a journal or "diary" program, although I use it for storing lots of stuff, like software license/registration keys, passwords, network information, etc.
When used on two different machines, the data accessed by both of these programs gets out of sync. It's annoying to have to wade through all the news articles that I already marked as having been read when I go back and forth between home and work. Similarly, if I add or change something in MacJournal, I want it to be the same on both my machines. This is where iDisk comes in. You can store the data files used by programs on iDisk. If that's all the information you need, you can stop reading this hint now. For detailed instructions, read on.
There are two approaches you can take:
- Access files directly on your iDisk.
- Maintain a local copy of your iDisk and have it sync automatically (or manually).
The advantage to (2) is that your data will always be available to you even if you don't have an internet connection. Also, since the data is local, accessing/updating it is fast. The disadvantage is that you have to wait for iDisk to sync the data to ensure that whatever updates you made to your local copy are mirrored on your remote iDisk, and then again it needs to sync the data on your remote iDisk over to the local copy on your other machine.
To use option (1), you only need to make sure that your .mac account is set up and you're connected to your iDisk. However, setting up the symbolic links (below) will be slightly different depending on whether you use option (1) or (2).
To use (2), go to .Mac -> iDisk in System Preferences and check the box labeled "Create a local copy of your iDisk". This will take several minutes to complete. Once it does, the iDisk drive in Panther's Finder will be a local mirror of whatever is on your remote iDisk (which is on Apple's Servers). Note that in either case only SOME of the folders of your iDisk are writable by you. For example, there is a "Library" folder on your iDisk if you're using iSync. But you aren't allowed to create any folders in the Library folder. For that reason, I chose to put my files in the Documents folder. It's read/write for me, but no one else can see the contents.
I am using two different programs to illustrate this hint because one involves setting up a symbolic link and the other does not:
MacJournal:
The data files used by MacJournal can be stored wherever you want to store them. You can set the path using the Advanced tab of the Preferences. All you have to do is change the path to point at the appropriate folder on your iDisk. In my case, I created a MacJournal folder in the iDisk/Documents folder, copied my existing MacJournal database files over, and told MacJournal to look there.
NetNewsWire:
This program always looks for its files in ~/Library -> Application Support -> NetNewsWire. So how do you tell it to look on your iDisk? Set up a symbolic link:
- Move the NetNewsWire folder in ~/Library -> Application Support over to the Documents folder on your iDisk. Be sure the NetNewsWire folder in ~/Library -> Application Support is gone, because you're going to create a symbolic link to the one on your iDisk.
- Open a Terminal window and type cd ~/Library/Application Support/
- If using option (1) from above, and your .mac username is "fenster", then type ln -s /Volumes/fenster/Documents/NetNewsWire NetNewsWire
- If using option (2) from above, you don't need to worry about your .mac username, just type ln -s /Volumes/iDisk/Documents/NetNewsWire NetNewsWire
The above can be adapted to use with any other programs for which you want to share the data files among two different machines using your iDisk. For example, you could use symbolic links to store individual preference files on your iDisk if you wanted. I don't think I'd do this for the entire Preferences folder, but I suppose you could.
