[kman42]

I would like to be able to access files on my work computer from home, but I'm paranoid in general. I'd like to use something easy (with a gui) like AFP, but I can't figure out if AFP is secure in Tiger. I've read about a thousand things on google talking about AFP over SSH and it seems to be a moving target in every version of Tiger. In 10.4.8, is this a secure method of accessing files? Does AFP use ssh by default now? I don't see any checkboxes in the Sharing prefs to turn this on.

Alternatively, should I just create an ssh tunnel manually and then forward the afp ports through the tunnel? I have setup a proper ssh configuration between client and host and I'm comfortable that it is secure. Or should I just give up and use sftp?

thanks,
kman

[Sherman Homan]

Here is a fun way to spend the afternoon:

Mac OS X: Configuring AFP to use OpenSSH exclusively

How 'bout a L2TP VPN?

[Simon]

It's very easy to use AFP securely. Just tunnel it through ssh.

Set up your ssh config file with a local forward to the Mac you want to access. This will look something like

Code:
Host remotemac
User yourname
Hostname remotemac.wherever.com
LocalForward 9548 remotemac.wherever.com:548

This basically tells ssh to forward all local traffic on port 9548 (you can chose this one as you like as long as it's not a privileged port) to the remote Mac's port 548 which is the AFP port.

In a shell open the ssh connection to the remote Mac
ssh yourname@remotemac

and then in the Finder mount the AFP shares with something like
afp://yourname@localhost:9548

Done. It's as simple as that.

[kman42]

Thanks, Simon. That was the other possibility I was considering. In the end I downloaded Fugu and used sftp to transfer some files. Worked great.

[Simon]

Well, if you just want to upload/download a few files, scp is probably the easiest way to go. I use about two dozen times daily.

[kman42]

Yes. I was checking out scp, but I was having problems with directories with spaces in them. Any suggestions?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by kman42

Yes. I was checking out scp, but I was having problems with directories with spaces in them. Any suggestions?

That's no problem at all, you just need a little trick.

Either you put file paths with spaces in quotes like
"/Volumes/Some Disk"
or
'/Volumes/Some Disk'

or you simply precede the spaces with a backslash like
/Volumes Some\ Disk

If you have a path with a space you can use tab completion in the shell and it will show you how the backslash thing works.