Scott Lowe - Home Networking: The Missing Manual

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Jamie Peppard was production editor and proofreader for Home Networking: The Missing Manual . Linley Dolby was the copy editor. Marlowe Shaeffer and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Johnna VanHoose Dinse wrote the index.

Ellie Volckhausen designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by David Freedman. Karen Montgomery produced the cover layout with Adobe InDesign CS using Adobe's Minion and Gill Sans fonts.

David Futato designed the interior layout, based on a series design by Phil Simpson. This book was converted by Andrew Savikas from Microsoft Word to FrameMaker 5.5.6. The text font is Adobe Minion; the heading font is Adobe Formata Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano, Jessamyn Read, and Lesley Borash using Macromedia FreeHand MX and Adobe Photoshop CS.

Apple has done the world a mighty favor by inventing the Keychain as part of its Macintosh operation system. The concept is brilliant: whenever you log into Mac OS X and type in your password, you've typed the master code that tells the computer, "It's really me. I'm at my computer now." The Mac responds by automatically filling in every password blank you encounter in your networking adventures (and in your Web-surfing exploits, too, if you use a Keychain-smart browser like Safari or OmniWeb).

You can safely forget all of the passwords required for accessing the various other Macs on your network. (Of course, it's a good idea to write them down somewhere for protection and posterity, in case your hard drive dies and takes your Keychain with it or you want to buy a book on Amazon.com from your PC at work.)

Because the Keychain is on all the time and memorizes most passwords automatically, it winds up being invisible for many people. (You do have to go through one step: the first time you enter a password into a dialog box, you need to turn on the checkbox asking if you want ), connecting to your iDisk (the cool chunk of online data storage space you get when you sign up for a .Mac account with Apple), and so on. Behind the scenes, the Mac quietly and courteously collects the various passwords so that you don't need to enter them again.

When your Keychain is unlocked, you can open your password-protected FTP sites, iDisk, network servers, and so on, without ever having to tap in a password. Technically, you're supposed to enter a name and master password to "unlock" the Keychain every time you sit down and log into your Mac, thereby turning on this automatic-password feature. But Apple figured: "Hey, you've already entered a name and master password just by logging into the Mac, and that's good enough for us." If you work alone and are the only one to use the computer, the Keychain therefore becomes automatic, invisible, and generally wonderful.

But if you work in an office where someone else might sit down at your Mac while you're off getting an Almond Joy, you might want to lock either your whole Mac or the Keychain itself when you wander away to the vending machine. (Locking the Keychain doesn't require a password.) Mac OS X won't automatically fill in your passwords until you return to your desk and unlock the Keychain again.

You can lock the Keychain in any of several ways, each of which involves the Keychain Access program (Mac OS X: in your Applications Utilities folder; Mac OS 9: Control Panels Keychain Access):

• Lock the Keychain manually . Click the Lock button in the toolbar of the Keychain Access window (see ).

• Lock the Keychain manually using the Apple menulet . Open Keychain Access and then choose View Show Status in Menu Bar. This gives you an always visible Keychain menu icon at the top of your screen, including a Lock Keychain command, as well as some other useful commands (like Lock Screen). Once this menu is in place you won't need to use Keychain Access again when you need to lock and unlock the Keychain.

• Lock the Keychain automatically . In the Keychain Access program, choose Edit Change Settings for Keychain [your name]. The resulting dialog box lets you set up the Keychain to lock itself, say, after your Mac has been inactive for five minutes, or whenever the Mac goes to sleep. When you return to the Mac, you'll be asked to reenter your account password to unlock the Keychain, restoring your automatic-password feature.