Hi,

I'll be going on vacation overseas soon, and I want to put scans of all
my important documents (airline tickets, passport, insurance, etc) online
so I can retrieve them easily in an emergency if I need them, from any
computer in the world with web access.

Of course I want to password protect everything so only I can get at
them. I know how to make an encrypted .dmg for this purpose on OS X,
but of course non OS X computers can't read this format.

Is it possible to create password protected ZIP archives on OS X, that
can easily be opened on Windows machines? I can also create encrypted
tar.gz archives, but I don't know how well Windows machines can handle
these either.

Any other better ideas that I'm overlooking?

TIA
K.

In article <%gqje.2893$HI.2651@edtnps84>, sp@m.sucks.email.invalid
(=?ISO-8859-9?Q?Kir=E1ly?=) wrote:

> I'll be going on vacation overseas soon, and I want to put scans of all
> my important documents (airline tickets, passport, insurance, etc) online
> so I can retrieve them easily in an emergency if I need them, from any
> computer in the world with web access.
>
> Of course I want to password protect everything so only I can get at
> them. I know how to make an encrypted .dmg for this purpose on OS X,
> but of course non OS X computers can't read this format.
>
> Is it possible to create password protected ZIP archives on OS X, that
> can easily be opened on Windows machines? I can also create encrypted
> tar.gz archives, but I don't know how well Windows machines can handle
> these either.

Assuming you computer is networked, you can set your Mac OS X (in Systems
Preferences/Sharing) for use with ftp (less safe) or ssh. Make sure you
have a safe password, one mixing digits and letters, as anyone with it can
access your computer. If SSH is enabled, you can access your computer from
any UNIX computer having the ssh program (Like in the Mac Terminal), and
you can pick down files using the sftp. The Mac OS has otherwise a nice
GUI for the ftp: just plug it into the Finder/Go/Connect to Server menu.
If your computer isn't online, you can consider starting an account at
Yahoo/Microsoft/LinuxMail, etc. and put your stuff there. One way to do it
is to send you mail. It will then be there for you to log in from any
Internet Cafeteria.

--
Hans Aberg

Hans Aberg <haberg@math.su.se> wrote:
> Assuming you computer is networked, you can set your Mac OS X (in Systems
> Preferences/Sharing) for use with ftp (less safe) or ssh. Make sure you

Not a bad idea, but I'm going to be away from home for six weeks. I'll
be powering down my Mac during the time I am away; I really don't want to
leave it on the whole time. Just uploading a file archive to my ISP's
webspace would work best for me.

K.

In article <Iqtje.6532$on1.3988@clgrps13>, sp@m.sucks.email.invalid
(=?ISO-8859-9?Q?Kir=E1ly?=) wrote:

> Hans Aberg <haberg@math.su.se> wrote:
> > Assuming you computer is networked, you can set your Mac OS X (in Systems
> > Preferences/Sharing) for use with ftp (less safe) or ssh. Make sure you
>
> Not a bad idea, but I'm going to be away from home for six weeks. I'll
> be powering down my Mac during the time I am away; I really don't want to
> leave it on the whole time. Just uploading a file archive to my ISP's
> webspace would work best for me.

You have to check this: But I think that if the computer is at sleep, one
can activate it from the network via an adminstrator account (like the one
you get when the Mac OS X system is installed). So have System
Preferences/Energy Saver on, in which case the computer does not consume
much power.

--
Hans Aberg

Hans Aberg <haberg@math.su.se> wrote:
> If your computer isn't online, you can consider starting an account at
> Yahoo/Microsoft/LinuxMail, etc. and put your stuff there. One way to do it
> is to send you mail. It will then be there for you to log in from any
> Internet Cafeteria.

Oops, didn't read this part when I replied before. Great idea, I think
I'll do that. Thanks!

GG

In article <d1vje.5961$9A2.1275@edtnps89>, sp@m.sucks.email.invalid
(=?ISO-8859-9?Q?Kir=E1ly?=) wrote:

> Hans Aberg <haberg@math.su.se> wrote:
> > If your computer isn't online, you can consider starting an account at
> > Yahoo/Microsoft/LinuxMail, etc. and put your stuff there. One way to do it
> > is to send you mail. It will then be there for you to log in from any
> > Internet Cafeteria.
>
> Oops, didn't read this part when I replied before. Great idea, I think
> I'll do that. Thanks!

Be aware, though, that on a freebie account, if you don't log in every
month or so, if the maintainer puts the account to inactive, typically all
your mail and files are lost.

--
Hans Aberg

In article
<haberg-2105050104210001@c83-250-193-139.bredband.comhem.se>,
haberg@math.su.se (Hans Aberg) wrote:

> In article <Iqtje.6532$on1.3988@clgrps13>, sp@m.sucks.email.invalid
> (=?ISO-8859-9?Q?Kir=E1ly?=) wrote:
>
> > Hans Aberg <haberg@math.su.se> wrote:
> > > Assuming you computer is networked, you can set your Mac OS X (in Systems
> > > Preferences/Sharing) for use with ftp (less safe) or ssh. Make sure you
> >
> > Not a bad idea, but I'm going to be away from home for six weeks. I'll
> > be powering down my Mac during the time I am away; I really don't want to
> > leave it on the whole time. Just uploading a file archive to my ISP's
> > webspace would work best for me.
>
> You have to check this: But I think that if the computer is at sleep, one
> can activate it from the network via an adminstrator account (like the one
> you get when the Mac OS X system is installed). So have System
> Preferences/Energy Saver on, in which case the computer does not consume
> much power.

For this to work, you actually need to send what's called a Magic Packet
- any old network access, even from admin users, won't work.

There are a few ways to do this - Apple Remote Desktop will send the
appropriate packet, but you would need to run that on a Mac and be on
the same subnet as the machine in question. And you have to buy Appole
Remote Desktop, too.

Wake550 <http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13645> will
do it as well, but you'll need to be on the same Ethernet subnet as the
machine to wake up, and you'll need the hardware MAC address (from the
Network System Preferences or Apple System Profiler) of the machine
being woken as well.

There's a Unix tool called wakeonlan which works in OS X as well, but,
once again, the machine running the command will need to be on the same
subnet as the machine you're trying to wake up. I use this running on
our server along with a custom command in Webmin
<http://www.webmin.com/> to wake computers on our network - access to
Webmin is via an SSH tunnel in our case. Works very well when I want SSH
tunneled file sharing access to our Macs when I'm out and about.

I think the wake on lan thing isn't going to be useful to the original
poster. Having the machine auto-start at a particular time of day and
logging on then is probably easier to organise, but he wants access from
any type of machine as well, and I'm assuming access to a command line
for something like SSH access isn't assured.

Freebie accounts with GMail (Király, you can e-mail me for a GMail
invite) or .Mac (where the files can be put in a protected folder on the
iDisk) sounds like the most useful way to retain access to the files -
..Mac allows you to test drive for 60 days, so should cover the timeframe
you're looking at.

Hope that's of use

Sean

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sean McNamara mailto:sean@macassist.com.au
MacAssist Ph: (02) 8920 0866
Authorised Apple Solutions Reseller Fax: (02) 8920 0877
ABN 95 758 412 281 Mobile: 0414 270 132