When you connect to an AppleShare server via Command-K, click the "Options" button on the User - Password dialog box. Along with the Save to Keychain option is the option to use SSH to secure the connection to the server. Sweet!

In Mac OS X 10.1.x, the host table was disabled so that it was quite difficult to add host aliases (eg: "flare" is the alias I use for 192.168.0.2 on my home network). It was possible to do it using NetInfo, but it was not very clear how to do it and was very error prone.

In OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), the hosts table is now active ... even though the hosts file itself says that it only works in single user console mode. So, if you're in a hurry to add hosts that Rendezvous can't find, then simply edit your /etc/hosts file (as root) and add lines for each host alias.

But wait, there's more. It turns out that there's an even better way to do it. Simply create a temporary hosts table file with the extras and then use the niload command to add your host entries directly to NetInfo. This is especially helpful because you can copy a hosts table from some other machine on your network and use niload to import all of the entries for you.

Credit for this hint goes to bnenning, who posted it as part of a response to my Apple Slasdot posting.

I have a Linksys BEFW11S4 router/wireless access point which I use with two Airport equipped iBooks at home for wireless network access. It was only after I bought the Linksys that I found out that it doesn't support AppleTalk over the wireless network, only over Ethernet.

For most people, this wouldn't be an issue, but I have an Epson StylusColor 900N network printer, and unfortunately Epson's drivers (and those included in Mac OS X 10.2) only support network printing over Appletalk, even though the printer does support TCP/IP in Windows.

Upon upgrading my Macs to Mac OS X 10.2, I was pleased to find that not only does it include the Epson SC900N drivers in the OS, but also if I use one of my desktop Macs to share the printer, the iBooks on my wireless network can now print to it via TCP/IP (via the desktop). I can now print wirelessly and I only have to enable Appletalk on the Mac that is sharing the printer.

To enable Printer Sharing in Mac OS X 10.2, put a checkmark next to "Printer Sharing" in the Sharing preference pane. Any printers installed on the host Mac should then automatically appear in the Print Center window of any client Macs running 10.2 on the same network. Make sure you have "Show printers connected to other computers" enabled in the Print Center Preferences window.

Make sure you set the host Mac's Energy Saver settings to never go to sleep since clients won't be able to connect to printers shared by a sleeping Mac.

I just caught this one on the X4U mailing list, and it's an amazingly useful tip!

If you have a networked printer, point your browser to http://127.0.0.1:631/. You'll be presented with the CUPS administration screen, which allows you to manage your networked printers and jobs via an easy to use and understand series of web pages. Very slick!

It seems that the built-in Windows file sharing in 10.2 needs a little help to work correctly if you installed Jaguar over the top (ie from 10.1 to 10.2 without a format).

Just turning on the "Windows File Sharing" option in the sharing preferences is not enough. Users need to change their password before they can access their home directory. So change your password, and then change it back to what you had, and windows sharing should work and you still have your old password.

[Editor's note: I wonder if this has something to do with the encryption of the password? Any smb gurus want to provide some insight? I had no problems with Windows sharing, but then again, I did a clean install.]

One of the (very) nice features in Jaguar is the bundled Samba server, which allows your Mac to be visible to Windows computers. All you need to do is enable the setting for "Windows File Sharing" on the Services tab of the Sharing preferences panel (and make sure the user is allowed to connect from Windows boxes in the Accounts preferences panel). After that, each user can access his or her home folder from any Windows machine on the network.

While this is a great advance over the need to install and configure Samba, the downside is that only your home directory is shared. I needed to do more than this, as we keep our digitized CD collection on another hard drive and serve it up to a Turtle Beach Audiotron in the living room (see this hint for the details). So to get the Audiotron working, I needed a way to establish a Samba share for my iTunes hard drive.

After "phoning a friend," he pointed me to the smb.conf file located in /etc. I then spent a bit of time reading the extensive (over 100 pages!) man pages for smb.conf, and tried and failed a few (too many?) times before successfully creating my new share ... but in the end, I triumphed over the command line!

Read the rest of the article for a (very very light, for that's all I know!) introduction to creating additional Samba shares in Jaguar.

The Nokia 6310i is a tri-band mobile phone with GPRS and Bluetooth built in. Making a Bluetooth connection between Mac OS X and the phone is very easy ... establishing a GPRS connection to the Internet is not.

Read the rest of the article for step by step instructions for getting an Apple Macintosh running Mac OS X 10.1.5 online with GPRS via a Nokia 6310i mobile phone and Bluetooth. GPRS is taking off now in Europe - these instructions will be of most use to a UK reader. I'm not sure of the status of GPRS in the States.

This may be obvious to most folks, but it came as a surprise to me even after reading the Apple documentation on the Airport. Apple says it should be possible to configure wired clients using DHCP, but that didn't work in my situation. I have one of the older v.1 Airports, for which prices are falling. These only have a single ethernet port, so they cannot isolate a DSL/cable modem from a local Ethernet network the way they can a dialup connection. With a simple Ethernet hub providing a connection to the DSL/Cable modem, however, they can route internet traffic to all computers on the hub with IP addresses in their distribution range, in addition to Airport card equipped wireless computers.

Read the rest of the article for the how-to...

To create a directory that can be accessed locally, as well as remotely by another user via AppleTalk (with a password and user name required for the remote user) do the following:

1. Create a new user.
   
2. Restart in System 9.
   
3. Delete all of the folders in that user's folder (Desktop, Pictures, and so on). [Editor's aside: You should be able to do this with 'su' in the Terminal without rebooting, but I haven't tested this hint so I'm not sure about that!]
   
4. Restart in OS X using your main user account.

Provide the user name and password for this new stripped down user account to the person(s) who need to share this folder. Needless to say, they will also need to know the name of your computer.

Put whatever you wish to share in this stripped user folder.

If you create a new folder or file in this shared directory, the remote users will be able to access them just fine since they are logged in as the owner of that account (files/folders have the owner/group of the folder they are created in).

If you move or copy files to this shared user account from your main user account (or some other user account on your computer), you will need to change their owner and group to match the shared user account or the remote user(s) won't be able to use them.

I use this system to allow students to upload their homework files to my notebook computer, without allowing them to roam around in the rest of my hard drive.

If you use a Mac laptop in a Windows network, this maybe of some use. From macwindows.com:

On July 17, 2002 at Macworld Expo today, Microsoft announced the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) client for Mac OS X, a free download that enables remote connection and control of Windows PCs computers over a network. It lets Macs connect to Terminal Services on NT 4 Terminal Server, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP clients (for remote help) and Windows .NET servers

I have tested this with a dial-up connection to a Windows 2000 Terminal Server. No issues in connecting - just need an IP address or machine name - and I was able to access the full range of programs, ie Outlook, Visio etc. Also found that I could use my 'DAVE' connection at the same time. Yet to try on company LAN, but I can't forsee any problems. Ultimate goal is to use with DSL connection / VPN.