Messages

Hi Laz!

For backup programs what you should use is the ignore list (not application associations).  When the program runs and tries to access the folder, you should add it to the white list from the password prompt.

For more information, please see Espionage's documentation on this subject:

http://www.taoeffect.com/espionage/EspionageHelp/pages/usg-ignorelist.html
http://www.taoeffect.com/espionage/EspionageHelp/pages/ui-prompt.html

Best regards,
Greg, Tao Effect

Hi doogie859,

Our apologies, the current version of Espionage comes with a version of iSpy that can kernel panic rarely.  We've fixed this bug and will be releasing a significant update to Espionage within a day or two, so hold tight.  This upcoming update may also address the other issue that you were having with the password prompt not appearing.

As to whether or not the panic can cause data corruption, it is theoretically possible, but highly unlikely, and having the entire folder (as opposed to a single file) get corrupted is even less likely.  Of course, regardless of the situation, we always strongly recommend you maintain backups of your files.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

Greg @ Tao Effect

My apologies that it's taken me so long to get back to you on this one, we've been extremely busy working on the next update.  I've finally had a chance to take a look at the problem and it seems like Espionage, in the way it currently behaves, is not compatible with Quicken.

The problem lies in the fact that Quicken is a Carbon app that is launched through a different application:

Code Select Expand

/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Support/LaunchCFMApp
Espionage expects that the bundle's executable is run instead:

Code Select Expand

/path/to/Quicken 2007/Contents/MacOS/Quicken 2007
Instead this executable is read in by LaunchCFMApp, and it is LaunchCFMApp that quits, not 'Quicken 2007'.  Espionage does not know of this connection and therefore does not know to watch for the exit of LaunchCFMApp.

All "pure" Carbon apps work this way actually, but they are getting rarer and rarer as it is possible for an application to use the Carbon framework while being bundled as a "normal" OS X application bundle, which Espionage has no problem with). It is possible to modify Espionage to recognize "pure" Carbon apps, but given our developmental resources, the increasing rarity of pure Carbon apps, and the fact that this is the only example that's been reported to us, it's unlikely that we'll be able to implement this soon. :-(

Sent

Thanks, we received it. I'll get back to you when we've had a chance to look it over, hopefully sometime today or tomorrow.

That's very odd, we've tested Espionage with the latest version of Growl and it works just fine...

Try logging out and logging back in.  Then perform some task that should show notifications like unlocking/locking folders, make sure you've enabled Info notifications in the Notifications preferences first though.

If you don't see them can you check the contents of the system log? Espionage has a short-cut to it in its Help menu.  Check to see if there are any messages associated with Growl, you can just filter for "growl".

Thank you for the crash report, we have fixed this problem in development versions of Espionage, and will be releasing an update within a few weeks (sometime this month).

In the meantime, if the crashes continue, I would suggest disabling the "Lock On Quit" option for all of your application associations for all of your Espionage'd folders, that may not completely fix it, but it should reduce the chance of it occurring.  If it still happens too frequently then try setting all of your folders to auto-unlock at login (and again, leave "Lock On Quit" disabled for all application associations).

Great! :-) Thanks for the link on how to get postfix setup, that looks like it could be useful knowledge to have.

Oh I just tried one more time and this time I get the dialog "Folder Locked" and the application "diskimages-helper" wants access to the folder Quicken Data... If I click Cancel, Quicken still opens and asks where the data file is. what is going on?

There are two prompts that Espionage can bring up, one is for a "normal access", i.e. when something is trying to access something inside of a folder, and in this case the title of the prompt will be "Folder Locked".  The other prompt has the title "Password Required" and will show a picture of an application.  This is the application association prompt, it prevents the application from launching before its data is unlocked, and this is the prompt that we want to appear when you launch Quicken.

It looks like the Quicken application is not wrapped into a typical application bundle, and therefore Espionage isn't sure what executable to watch "for launch".  The easiest way for me to help would be if you could zip up the entire Quicken application (not its data, just the application), and email it to our support address.  We'll then be able to take a look at it closely to see what the problem is.

I'm not sure, we haven't tested Espionage with NeatWorks, it may be incompatible.  I would check to see if it's possible to move that library folder to a sub folder of Documents, and encrypting that sub folder.  If that's not possible then I would consider sending the developers of NeatWorks an email regarding this issue.

Setting up your mac to require a password to login is great for thwarting the casual user from accessing your Mac, however, anyone with have the technical knowledge of the mac knows that you can boot up from a Mac OS X install CD and reset the admin password for the Mac, thus enabling anyone to login again, and thusly, any of your folders that are set to "auto unlock at login" are open for the taking. SO if someone DOES steal your Mac, resetting the admin password will give them access to locked folders.

Actually this is not true, and it's good that you bring it up because it seems to be a common misconception (perhaps this was true for an early version of OS X?).  When you do that, you do change the account password, but the keychain password (where the folders' passwords are stored) remains the same, and requires that the user enter the previous password to update it.

Otherwise it would be a huge security risk to anyone who lost their laptop, as users tend to reuse their passwords for lots of things.

While making sure the application isn't running and the folder is locked, try renaming the Quicken 2007 application to: Quicken 2007.app

You'll need to re-associate it with the folder after renaming it.

Espionage's built-in notifications are 3 different colored boxes that appear in the upper right hand corner. I have Espionage's prefs set to allow those. I have Growl notifications set to off. However, when Espionage is doing any sort of process, your notifications pop up as planned, but also a Growl semi-transparent Bezel fades in and out center of the main monitor. Am i correct in assuming that those are not your built-in ones?

That's very odd. The notifications should be either the built-in ones, or Growl's, never both. Are you certain Espionage is responsible for it? Screenshots of what you're seeing might help.

[I GOT IT TO WORK!]

I GOT IT TO WORK! It seems there is an additional command i can use in the do shell script command that tells it not to wait and to output the result to dev/null.  Here is the resulting script that works:

Great job!  :D

By the way, did I mention I'm not really a scripter?

I certainly wouldn't have guessed that as you certainly seem to have a programmer's drive. ;-)

IT WORKS! :D  :D  :D  Now I think I will stick with launching Entourage until I know of doing it thru the CL using smtp. Although I got it to work, as both you and I have pointed out, that this script alone can be dangerous as anyone with access to it can unlock Mail without a password.

You may want to have a look at getting the 'sendmail' command working... I don't know much about it but I'm fairly certain that if you got that working you would have an ideal solution to your problem.

Here are some possibly useful links:

http://subtlecoolness.com/2009/06/21/enabling-postfix-sendmail-on-mac-os-x-105-leopard/
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20081217161612647

Google Searches:
http://www.google.com/search?q=sendmail+os+x
http://www.google.com/search?q=sendmail+os+x+10.5

I see your conundrum. Unfortunately Espionage is not very scriptable at the moment, although this is on our list of refinements to add down the road.

I would suggest considering various workarounds to this problem.  For example, are you sure that you need Mail to be locked during this process? You might be able to modify your script to quit only certain applications and leave Mail running.  After all, if you have a script that would pass a password to Espionage, that means that password is stored somewhere on your drive, and that's just about as secure as leaving Mail running anyway.  As long as the screensaver password is protecting the computer, there should be no problem with this work-around.

Another possible solution is to write your own script that sends the email, although this may or may not be a realistic option for you.  There are plenty of languages out there that have libraries that support "easily" sending email via SMTP.

But I'm not even sure the Espionage password entry dialog box is standard OS X fair).

It is, Espionage is completely Cocoa-based, though for this you would want to script EspionageHelper, not Espionage.

Was unchecking the option in Espionage supposed to accomplish this?

Yes, although it should be mentioned (and it is in the manual), that there are a couple caveats to notifications:

• Espionage has built-in notifications, and also supports using Growl. Are you sure you didn't confuse the two?
• Only informational notifications can be disabled from within Espionage (they're green, if you use the built-in notifications). Alerts, and Critical Alerts cannot be disabled, nor should they be.

So, are you certain that you situation didn't fall under one of those? Is it possible that you might have mistaken alerts for info notifications?