Read Plist Files With Quick Look

With Apple touting three hundred new features in Leopard, the ones you hear about the most are the ones that are easy to see. Architectural improvements like file system design take a back seat to HTML email stationery and video conferencing backdrops. It's nice to have things look good, but systems administrators really need tools that help things run smoothly and conveniently. Unexpectedly, Quick Look helps bridge that gap.

OS X keeps most of it's configuration settings in .plist files, and since Tiger those files have been in machine-readable binary format instead of human-readable XML. That's meant using Plist Editor (from Apple's Developer Tools) to edit them, or converting them on the command line first, making them inconvenient to browse.

With the Quick Look functionality built into Leopard's Finder, you're not restricted to previewing photographs and Office documents. Select any .plist file, even those in binary format, and hit the space bar. You'll receive a heads-up style display of the contents of that file in XML. If you've got multiple files to check, you can scroll through them in the Finder with the arrow keys and Quick Look will update for each document.

It may not be flashy enough for top billing, but this little trick can be a big time saver.

Synchronize iCal Calendars

It lacks a central server or domain-based authentication. It has no availability browsing. Until recently, it only worked on local networks. Why even review a calendaring product with the limitations of BusySync?

Because despite it's lack of enterprise-level features, BusySync works the way many administrators wish iCal Server had. It's simple for end users, elegant in execution, and provides read/write access to iCal calendars with little configuration. While it's not a feasible solution in larger environments, for a small company or independent department BusySync could very well be the perfect calendaring solution.

When installed on each client machine, the BusySync configuration options appear in System Preferences. The "Publish" pane allows users to select which calendars are shared, whether they can be written to, and if they're password protected. For Leopard users, it also allows the use of SSL to secure calendar connections. The "Subscribe" pane lets users see the available calendars on their network, choose which they'd like access to, and when they last synced with them. There's even a single password field, with read or write access determined by which password is used. By sharing out user calendars from a central "server" machine, you can implement an additional layer of management control and redundancy as well.

Despite it's modest feature set, BusySync functions beautifully, allowing users to share and edit iCal data quickly and seamlessly. For a team too small to invest in iCal Server, it's an easy, intuitive, and low-maintenance method for collaborative calendaring.

Update: Since our initial review, Leopard 10.5.2 has broken BusySync severely, leaving users unsure when and if their calendars were syncing properly. While sympathetic, BusyMac were unable to implement an effective workaround to the issue. Fortunately, the more recent 10.5.4 update seems to have squashed the SyncServices bugs that had rendered BusySync unusable.

BusySync retails for $19.95 per-user.

Secure Remote Access With VPN

When most users think about remote access, what they ask for is VPN. For travel, telecommuting, and satellite offices, virtual private networks have been the defacto method of remote access for the better part of this decade. Though an assortment of VPN solutions are available for the Macintosh platform, many require third-party clients that may not keep pace with operating system changes, and while VPN is a complex system requiring a well-provisioned network, none is more easily configured the VPN service built in to Mac OS X Server.

Configure The VPN Service On Mac OS X Server:

To begin, open Server Admin, selecting the machine that will become your VPN server from the "Available Servers" column. In the "Services" tab, check "VPN" then click "Save". Now select the VPN service from the list on the left, and begin with the "L2TP" pane.

Check "Enable L2TP over IPsec" and fill in the starting and ending IP addresses for the IP range of your network that can be assigned to VPN clients. In the "PPP Authentication" section click the "Directory Service" option to allow VPN access to users with server or network accounts. In most environments you'll want to choose "MS-CHAPv2" as your method of authentication, as it's simpler to troubleshoot remotely compared to Kerberos ticketing. Under "IPSec Authentication", enter a long and complex password to use as the shared secret for authorizing VPN clients. This password is the basis for all point-to-point encryption, so the greater the number and assortment of characters the better off you'll be.

Next, go to the "Client Information" pane, and fill in the DNS servers and search domains that your VPN clients should be assigned once inside your network. Click the "plus" symbol at the bottom of the window and add your network information, including your network's IP address (likely ending in zero) and subnet mask, and mark the entry as "Private" from the pull-down menu. Then click the "Start VPN" button.

This is all the configuration that's required on the server side, but you'll need to make sure your router or firewall is set up properly as well, configuring it to allow forwarding of ports 500, 1701, and 4500 to your server from your external IP.

Configure VPN Access On Mac OS X Client:

On your VPN client machines, open the "Network" pane in System Preferences. Click the "plus" sign, then select "VPN" from the "Interface" menu that appears, and below it "L2TP over IPSec" from the "VPN Type" menu. Fill in the server address (either by name, if it's referenced in your external DNS, or by external IP) and the account name from the server, then click "Authentication Settings".

In the window sheet that appears, enter the password for the user account you're connecting with, and below it enter the shared secret for the VPN installation. Click "OK" to save the settings, then click "Connect". If everything is working properly properly, you'll see a green light next to the padlock graphic on the left, and you should now be able to reach machines inside your protected network from remote locations.