A Bunch of Questions Related to OS X, .sparseimages and its Protocols.

[Lokrado]

Well as the title mentions I have a bunch of questions related to OS X and its protocols. Some of these questions do not belong in here but I figured I might as well just post them all here.

1) When accessing an AFP server and reading an encrypted .sparsebundle.

1.1) by connecting by pressing CMD+K and typing in the IP. Will it read the hard drive and send the data as it is, encrypted, or will OS X tell the drive exactly what to read and in what order and thus sending the data unencrypted?

1.1.1) If no, how can this be achieved?

1.2) by connecting through MobileMe, will MobileMe act as an 6to4 and thus as a proxy server, as it does with back to my mac when remotely controlling the other machine. Or will it simply act as an IP resolver?

2) Can I change the port VPN server runs on in OS X Server, aswell as in the VPN client on OS X?

3) Anyone know a good free certificate authority who's certificate I can use to encrypt email? - any enlightenment would be pleasant.

4) Anyone know an applescript to compact a .sparsebundle and then mount it? - to me the problem in this is getting the script to wait with mounting until the compacting is done.

5) Can I make a triple bootable USB pin with say Mac, Windows and BackTrack 4? - Seems logically impossible to me as they all use different partitioning schemes.

6) Ejecting .sparsebundles and Finder sidebar.

6.1) Can I hide a drive in the Finder sidebar?

6.2) Say I have a firewire disk with seven .sparsebundles, can I make it so that the disk itself is automatically ejected when one or serval images has been mounted and the last one has been ejected. - Or maybe much as would appear when ejecting a disk with multiple partitions?


For most of these questions goes; "If yes, how?"

Edit: Title reads .sparseimages, I ment .sparsebundles.

as an edit to 6.1) I know i can edit fstab but would prefer not to as the last time i did that i ended up getting my logic board replaced

Iw as also wondering if i can use my old 2008 17" MBP charger on my new 2010 17" MBP

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Regarding 6.1, this couldn't be easier. There are 2 ways to do it.

Method 1: Drag the offending disk/volume off the sidebar. It goes POOF!
Method 2: Open Finder's preferences, and uncheck categories of disks you don't want in the sidebar.

 

[Lokrado]

Drag the offending disk/volume off the sidebar. It goes POOF!

simplicity at it's finest huh!
just need an applescript to mount the sparsebundle stored within the disk

 

[iVoid]

1.1) by connecting by pressing CMD+K and typing in the IP. Will it read the hard drive and send the data as it is, encrypted, or will OS X tell the drive exactly what to read and in what order and thus sending the data unencrypted?

The computer does all the work to encrypt or unencrypt data, so when it reads the data from the sparsebundle or writes to it, all data between the computer and the physical disk is encrypted. (this is the same if it's a local disk or a remote server disk).

There are special drives that can do encryption itself entirely within the electronics of the drive. But in those cases, the data is unencrypted/encrypted on the fly and all data between the drive interface and the computer would be unencrypted (not recommended for servers).

1.2) by connecting through MobileMe, will MobileMe act as an 6to4 and thus as a proxy server, as it does with back to my mac when remotely controlling the other machine. Or will it simply act as an IP resolver?

If you access the sparse bundle file itself from Mobile me and open it on a remote mac, then all the data back and forth is encrypted.

If you mount the encrypted sparse bundle file on the server and then access that volume remotely (vial a local AFP share or mobile me or vpn), then all data is sent unencrypted between the server and remote Mac. UNLESS the actual connection between the server and remote Mac is secure and encrypted (no idea how secure MobileMe is).

4) Anyone know an applescript to compact a .sparsebundle and then mount it? - to me the problem in this is getting the script to wait with mounting until the compacting is done.

Yeah, the compact process isn't very friendly. Wish Apple would put the compact function into the GUI HD Utility. I'd think Applescript could launch the terminal utility and then wait for it to quit, but I don't do enough applescripting to help you there.

Keep in mind, you'd have to have the password in the applescript, which would be a major security risk.


6.2) Say I have a firewire disk with seven .sparsebundles, can I make it so that the disk itself is automatically ejected when one or serval images has been mounted and the last one has been ejected. - Or maybe much as would appear when ejecting a disk with multiple partitions?

Only way I can think to do that would be to have an applescript running every 5 minutes or so that looks for mounted volumes and if none of the sparsebundles are mounted, eject the firewire disk.

 

[Lokrado]

bla bla bla .

dude thank you very much, it left a few questions unanswered, but it vas very enlightening!