Ask TUAW: VPN, Entourage, TOSLINK, location manager, and more

In this edition of Ask TUAW we'll be looking at several questions about a Cisco VPN, clearing recipients in Entourage, a MacBook Pro's optical out, using a location manager, a little background on OS X and more.

As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of OS X, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we'll assume you're running Leopard if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!

Alex asks

MBP, Leopard, latest updates, etc, Airport Extreme, latest firmware though problem was experienced with old firmware as well. I have a hard drive attached to the extreme via USB, which I store my large iTunes library on. There's no problem connecting to the library or playing back to my Airport Express (Yep, from Extreme to MBP to Express, lol). The problem occurs when I have to VPN into my University using Cisco's VPN client. The MBP looses sight of the hard drive completely, so its not even an iTunes problem, my shared drive completely disappears from my Mac and I can't remount it even with the manual IP address. As soon as I quit Cisco though I can find it, though sometimes it requires reboots and power cycles, quite annoying!!! And its no fun working in Matlab and not having music :( Any reason why the VPN should be interfering with Airport's shared disk ability?

As a couple of readers pointed out, the problem is straight-forward. When you have the VPN active all your network traffic goes through it; indeed that is the whole point of the VPN. So far I can tell the only way around this is to have split tunneling enabled, but the problem is that has to be done on the other end (i.e server-side). So I don't think there's any direct solution to your problem. You could always temporary connect the USB hard drive directly to your Mac when you're using the VPN, but I'm afraid that's not really the elegant solution you wanted to hear.

Update: Several folks in the comments have suggested a solution I was not able to find in my original research. Apparently, the Cisco client does have an "Allow Local LAN Access" option in the advanced mode which may solve your problem (see the comments below).

Craig asks

The company i work for has been taken over/sold twice. So in my Entourage previous recipients list i've got 3 email address for every co-worker, to of which are obsolete. How do i delete the old ones?

Go to the Entourage Preferences > Compose and at the bottom hit the "Clear List" button. Of course this will completely clear the list, not just the old ones, but it will of course rebuild itself over time. If you have not done so yet it would be best to go through and add all your common contacts to your Address Book so you won't have to depend on your recent addresses list, and which will give you much more control over what is displayed.

CaptSaltyJack asks

I own a Mac Pro, and just recently bought a MacBook Pro. I'd like certain folders on both machines to be sync'd up when the MacBook Pro joins the LAN. On Windows, this is the "Offline Files" feature, where you could take a few folders on the road, make changes to files, then when you hop back on the home LAN, the updated files would sync to the home PC. This way, with the Mac, I could have my iTunes music and iPhoto images in both locations at all times. Is there any simple way of doing this?

There are different ways you could do this, using a location manager like Home Zone (beta) to trigger a syncing program like ChronoSync ($30). Perhaps, the easiest way to do this is with Martian Slingshot ($29.99), though this isn't triggered automatically by the connection, but simply checks for updates on a user-defined schedule.

imimop asks

I would like to know what makes Mac OS X, Mac OS X. I mean, what Unix is, what a kernel is... I dont wanna know how to work with it, or with Terminal. I just would like a simple explanation about Unix, kernel, the Darwin thing...

Frankly this isn't the kind of thing we normally do here at Ask TUAW, but I'll give you a short answer and some links where you can find out a lot more. There are many different versions of UNIX, which is an operating system originally developed for mainframe computers nearly 40 years ago. The particular variant in OS X is called BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and it is this underlying UNIX / BSD core which constitutes Darwin. This part of Mac OS X is actually open source and anyone can download it. This part of the OS is what actually interacts with the hardware, handles disk access, networking, etc. On top of that UNIX core is the proprietary GUI (Graphical User Interface) called Aqua which makes the Mac look and work as it does. As with many technical subjects Wikipedia is an excellent resource of these kinds of questions. You should check out the entries on Mac OS X and Darwin for much more information.

Hendel asks

I've relocated my iTunes library to external storage, specifically a RAID-5 NAS enclosure. This works fine, except that every time I reboot the system iTunes seems to lose the NAS connection and defaults back to the internal HD. I have to go into Preferences and point it back to the NAS, then let it re-organize everything again. I do already have the NAS automatically re-mounting at login via an entry in Accounts/Login Items. Is there a way to keep iTunes pointed at the right location?

I'm not entirely sure why it should be doing that, but I do have a suggestion: instead of pointing iTunes directly to your NAS in the iTunes preference, instead put an alias to the NAS in your ~/Music folder (and change the iTunes preference back to that folder).

Logan asks

I have a Macbook Pro (running Leopard) which I am constantly taking back and forth between college and my house. In my house I need to have a static IP (for port forwarding), but at my school I need to switch to DHCP to connect to their network. It's getting to be quite a nuisance constantly changing my network settings and I was wondering if there was any way I could write an automator script for this (which I would trigger in iCal for the times when I am at school and home).

I think what you really want is a location manager. You should check out LocationX. It allows you to set up different network setups (among other things) and then trigger the appropriate settings with a menubar item.

divinechaos asks

when I plug my digital speakers into my MacBook Pro (v1,1 w/ 10.5.2), I get digital audio. Yay for hybrid TOSLINK jacks. However, as most are aware, the OSX volume controls then deactivate. Fair enough. But why then can apps (especially, iTunes) still control the output volume? Why can't OSX simply control the output in the same way and continue to offer volume controls? I use hotkeys on Quicksilver triggers for my iTunes volume, so it's NOT a problem; however, I'm curious as to why this is the case, and why OSX doesn't offer similar controls.

Well, the simple answer is because that's the way it works! I think the slightly longer, but perhaps no more satisfying answer is simply this: the optical output is a line level source which Apple expects you to be feeding to a pre-amp or integrated amp. That device will be used for volume control so there's not really any need for volume control on the source. In other words, it's the same reason that the TOSLINK output of a Blu-ray player, etc. doesn't have a volume control.

Jak asks

Is there a way to make a custom OS X Install Disc, with my favorite third party apps and settings pre-installed? I've tried making an ISO dmg of my Leopard DVD, and then used the 'Go to Folder...' menu to insert images and applications before burning it to DVD again, but I haven't gotten that method to work. I'm just curious if it can be done... can it?

It sounds like you're interested in something like an OS X equivalent to a slipstreamed Windows install disc. There used to be an application to do this called Slipy, but so far as I can tell it is no longer being developed. May I suggest instead a full system disk image (though it won't likely fit on a DVD). For doing something like that I suggest you have a look at NetRestore from Mike Bombich.