Learn. Teach. Grow.
The Reading page has a list of books that I’ve read recently and/or recommend reading. The recommendations are grouped, you can skip to a section you’re interested in, including
I’ll keep trying to add to it or change out the recommendations in the future.
Mac users, the following outlines how you can store your Entourage 2008 and Apple Mail content wherever you want, including on an encrypted volume. Both Entourage and Mail seem to be fixed with the locations in which they store their data. Typically if you move the files that Entourage needs to another location, it just creates new blank ones the next time Entourage is started. The same is true for Mail. And if an attacker were to steal your laptop, because the mailstores for Entourage and Mail are not encrypted or password protected, should an attacker get copies of your local mailstore they will be able to read the content and messages stored there.
The mailstore is the local copy of your mail. Similar to the .pst and .ost files under Windows, the Mac Entourage 2008 client stores email in a directory at “/Users/Your_ID/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2008 Identities/Your_Profile” and the Mail app stores it’s mail in “/Users/Your_ID/Library/Mail/.” Other email clients such as Thunderbird will put their mail and profiles in the directories you specify during the setup.
Snow Leopard provides the ability to encrypt your home directory through the use of FileVault. However this poses several problems
A solution is to use separate encrypted drives for different purposes. This allows you to
After a lot of trial and error I found the following steps to work.
You should now have a copy of your Microsoft User Data contents on an encrypted drive, a copy of your original folder called Microsoft User Data_OFF, and an alias called Microsoft User Data in /Users/Your_ID/Documents
Note that the following did not work with the Entourage mailstore
Because of the alias, Entourage will try to open the content on the encrypted drive whenever you start it. It’s a .dmg image so your Mac will automatically try to mount the drive when you need it. You’ll be prompted to enter the password for the drive, and then Entourage will launch and write to the encrypted volume.
If you want the drive to be unmounted when you close Entourage, you can write an Automator service to help. You cannot just quit and eject or force eject the drive as the Entourage Database Daemon still has files open on the drive. The Automator service you write needs to save and quit Entourage, explicitly quit the Microsoft Database Daemon, and then gets and ejects the EntourageMailstore drive. Set the dropdown settings in the top to “no input” and “Entourage.” Save the service as “QuitEntourage.” It will show up as a service when you’re in the Entourage app.
You should confirm that when the EntourageMailstore drive is mounted, Time Machine or other backup utilities are not backing it up. If you want backups of your mail, check to make sure that your EntourageMailstore.dmg file is being backed up.
You should now have a copy of your Mail contents on an encrypted drive, a copy of your original folder called Mail_OFF, and an alias called Mail in /Users/Your_ID/Library/
That’s it. Because of the alias, Mail will try to open the content on the encrypted drive. It’s a .dmg image so your Mac will automatically try to mount the drive now that you need it. You’ll be prompted to enter the password for the drive, and then Mail will launch and write to the encrypted volume.
If you want the drive to be unmounted when you close Mail, you can write an Automator service that quits Mail, gets the AppleMailMailstore drive in the Finder, and ejects it. Set the drop-down settings in the top to “no input” and “Mail.” Save the service as “QuitMail.” It will show up as a service when you’re in the Mail app.
You should confirm that when the AppleMailMailstore drive is mounted, Time Machine or other backup utilities are not backing it up. If you want backups of your mail, check to make sure that your AppleMailMailstore.dmg file is being backed up.
