Although the mounting of FTP servers using "Connect to Server" doesn't work well in 10.2 (see this hint), I found today that clicking a link of type "ftp://...", at least in Mail, worked correctly. The server appeared as a mounted disk on my desktop, and I could browse and copy as in a normal finder window. I haven't tried this in any other apps, because I don't want to bring my system down, so try at your own risk!

[Editor's note: I'm not sure if this is any more stable than the currently troublesome Finder FTP browsing, or if the hint author happened to get one link which worked correctly. I'm not going to test it myself, for I've had nothing but problems with this feature in 10.2 on both my machines. Rumor has it that it works much much better in the (due any day now) 10.2.1 update.]

In OS X 10.2, Apple has added the new "share your Internet connection" function, and I am sure that a lot of users are going to use it as a software AirPort basestation. But I thought, why couldn't you go the other way? So that is just what I did, created a wireless network bridge.

Disable http proxies if you are having trouble mounting WebDAV servers. I am running Privoxy on a linux machine and using it as a proxy for my Macs, so I don't know if other proxies will work.

If anyone can figure out a way to coerce the Finder into respecting the bypass proxy settings in the networking system preferences I am all ears...

Would you like to offer remote users sftp access to a server but deny them the ability to login to it via ssh? The version of OpenSSH supplied with Mac OS X doesn't come with a dummy shell and it's somewhat involved to write your own, but you can get by without one. This suggestion by John Ritchie on the suse-security mailing list was a start:

The way I solved this (on Solaris with Openssh) was to set the sftp-only user's shell to be the sftp-server binary (/usr/local/libexec/sftp-server on my Solaris openssh build). I did not have to add this to /etc/shells.

Then using the information in the "Change user's default shell"hint, you can set up users that can access a server via sftp but not actually login via ssh. Once you have created your users and set up ssh on the server, you should then run the following for each user you want to restrict:

niutil -createprop . /users/joebob shell \
/usr/libexec/sftp-server

where joebob is replaced by the short name of the user you are modifying and /usr/libexec/sftp-server is the sftp-server binary. At least, that's where it is in 10.1.5. I don't know if they've moved it in 10.2; hopefully not but you can check the location of sftp-server by looking for the "Subsystem sftp" line in the sshd configuration file /etc/sshd_config)

Now these users can get access to the server via sftp but can't log in with ssh.

This hint applies to sharing a high speed Internet connection, such as a cable modem, with other computers on your local Ethernet network. It's not necessary if you are sharing a high speed Internet connection with your PowerBooks on your Airport network instead of the Ethernet network. Internet Sharing allows all the other computers to access the Internet through your Mac. It turns your Mac into kind of a router.

Routers usually have two ethernet ports: One public port for connection to the outside world, and one private port for connection to the internal private network. This allows the router to protect any traffic in the internal private network so that it stays private. The problem is that most Macs have only one Ethernet port.

I am not sure if this was ever posted before. But I just realized, that if you manually mount a server (cmd-K) and then drag the mounted server icon to your Login items window (in System Preferences), your system will automount them at startup. No password/login screen; it's just done.

[Editor's note: There have been other hints on automounting servers (1, 2), but neither discussed this simpler method. I don't have a network drive to easily test it with, so I can't vouch for its effectiveness.]

For those of you who are constantly mounting a certain computer over a network:

Instead of having to "Connect to Server" and wait for the networked machine to appear, and then type in the User/Pass, and then select the right volume ... Simply create an alias to the volume the next time it is mounted and you will only have to type in the Password.

This feature has been around in 10 from the start, but it has never worked more flawlessly for me than with Jaguar.

[Editor's note: If you connect to a number of servers, consider putting the aliases in a folder, and then keep that folder in your dock. This will give you one-click pop-up access to any server in the folder. You can also try putting the aliases in your login items, although pre-Jaguar functionality of this feature seemed a bit spotty, based on a couple of threads here.]

I often want to access my office's intranet and Samba fileserver while at home. There's a firewall in the way of course. However SSH from my static DSL IP is allowed, so the solution is to forward local ports on the Mac to a box with sshd inside the firewall.

For example if you want to access an internal intranet, connect to an internal proxy from your office desktop via an ssh connection:

  % ssh -N -L 8888:proxy.xyz.com:3128 \
    my.office.desktop.xyz.com

What is going on here is connections to your Mac's localhost port 8888 are tunneled to your office machine, which then forwards it to the office web proxy that is listening on port 3128. Then set your browser's proxy to localhost port 8888 and start browsing!

To access a Samba file server use something like this:

  % sudo ssh -v -l username -i ~username/.ssh/identity -N -L \
    139:samba.xyz.com:139 my.office.desktop.xyz.com

The go to Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server -> Address, and input the folder you want, ie smb://localhost/Docs.

These examples assume your intranet servers are in the public DNS; if not, you'll have to add entries to your Mac's hosts file.

For those of you dying to have decent VPN support under OSX, it appears Apple added it in 10.2 (I'm not sure, but I hadn't noticed this option in 10.1):

1. Open the Internet Config application (in your /Applications folder).
   
2. In the file menu select "New VPN connection window".
   
3. Enter your login/pass along with the VPN address and voila!

[Editor's note: I'm not sure when this was added...anyone tried this in 10.1?]

This will be useful for all of you Windows system admins who are trying to "make the switch" to a Mac desktop at work ... for those of us who are still coping with the separation anxiety of no longer having the benefit of maintaining multiple simultaneous remote desktop connections using the Terminal Services Advanced Client MMC snap-in.

After downloading and installing Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client, create a folder on your desktop full of all of your saved connections. Next go into the "Remote Desktop Connection" folder in your "Applications" folder and then copy and paste the "Remote Desktop Connection" binary into the folder on your desktop with all of your saved connections.

For every copy of the "Remote Desktop Connection" binary that you paste into the folder on your desktop, you will be able to run another concurrent Remote Desktop session by dragging one of you saved connections onto one of the executables. It's not quite the Advanced Client, but this is a major help when performing side-by-side system comparisons.