christina, A vpn is like a pipe or portal / tunnel openning between your machine and your place of work that wil allow you to acces your business / work area as if you were on your work network.
mainly it sets up a tunnel and then you remote access anothe rmachine in your work or internet access / wweb based software packages. ----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Donal Fitzpatrick Sent: Wednesday, 30 September 2009 11:29 a.m. To: [email protected] Subject: Re: VPN revisited Hi Christina, VPN stands for "virtual Private Network". Basically, it allows me to connect into my work network from home. I can see the network disks, send mail, and access all the resources I need to access as though I'm in the office. hth Donal On 29 Sep 2009, at 23:25, Christina wrote: > > This may sound dumb but for my information, could you please let me > know what a VPN is. > > Thanks, > Christina > On Sep 29, 2009, at 2:34 PM, Donal Fitzpatrick wrote: > >> >> Hi all, >> >> Ok I've been playing around with two VPN clients since I raised this >> topic about a month ago. The two clients I've looked at are >> Tunnelblick and Viscosity. In case anyone needs to use a VPN, my >> thoughts on both are given below. >> >> 1. Viscosity. I chose this one first because, as Esther said at the >> time this topic was discussed, it supports applescript. The >> installation for this application follows standard OSX conventions, >> and creates no problems with VO whatsoever. >> >> The application is not very accessible in the typical sense of the >> word. It uses a status menu (NSStatusItem which it locates in the >> vicinity of time machine, and the other Extra menu items Apple use. >> Problems with such status menus are well documented here and on other >> lists so I won't delve into that again. However, suffice it to say >> that because the status menu is inaccessible, it precludes getting to >> the menu items, preferences dialog and other aspects of the software. >> I did ask a sighted colleague to open the preferences dialog for me, >> and it was navigable, but not easily so. >> >> I mentioned earlier that Viscosity does support applescript. One can >> easily create scripts to connect to, and disconnect from the VPN. >> This feature makes the application usable. Finally, I'd like to >> acknowledge the developer of this application. During an email >> exchange, he acknowledged that the app could do with some work, and >> also succinctly explained the issues with the NSStatusItem. He has >> told me that he and other developers have been on to Apple regarding >> this issue, and await their response. >> >> 2. Tunnelblick. This application is very similar to Viscosity >> described above. However, it is an opensource project, and as such >> the source code is available. Once again, the installation process >> is >> no problem. However, the same issues regarding NSStatusItems emerge; >> that is, it creates one which cannot be reached using VO. A little >> digging on the TunnelBlick wiki produced documentation on the >> preferences, which can be found in a ".plist" file located in "~/ >> library/preferences". Editing this file in the normal way, (using >> some educated guesswork) I could actually configure the application >> to >> both start wen I logged on, and also to automatically connect to the >> VPN thereby negating the need to go near the inaccessible status >> menu. >> >> Finally on this application, while it does not, to the best of my >> knowledge support applescript, it does come with a command-line >> interface called openvpnstart. One has to drill down into the >> application package (using terminal) to run this app. Also, root >> privileges seem to be required to run it. However, this can be >> scripted using the usual shell-scripts and this approach also works >> quite well. >> >> So in summary, the two clients I've looked at are inaccessible in one >> sense, but are in fact usable with a little tweaking and >> experimentation. >> >> I hope this helps people, and might just save some time for others in >> the future. >> >> Cheers, >> >> Donal >> >>> > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
