PIRX  www.leapingbytes.com seems to be down.

August 4, 2007, 1:26 a.m. Eastern  
(Version 1.5.1)

K0T1K  www.leapingbytes.com is back in business.

thank you for your patience.

Andrei Tchijov

Leaping Bytes, LLC  
(Version 1.4)

K0T1K  My trusty G4 which was used as a web/mail server by Leaping Bytes, just went down hard. I am trying to figure out what to do about it.

Sorry for inconvenience,

Andrei Tchijov

Leaping Bytes, LLC  
(Version 1.4)

IMPERIALFLOW  There are a lot of comments about how easy this software is to use, and I can only believe that that must be for an older version.

I recently tried v1.4 to simply give me a nice interface for starting and stopping some SSH tunnels to a few servers I need to access.

The setup for this is so complicated I can't begin to understand the rhyme or reason. After an hour of just trying to get one tunnel working following the documentation at the developer's website I gave up.

The interface is crowded, the "Profile" and "Service" mechanism couldn't be more counter-intuitive, and once you get it all setup you can't even change the hostname of the "source" location to anything that makes sense... you know... like "localhost"

Anyway. I gave up. It was MUCH easier to download the old source code of "SSH Tunnel Manager" and build myself a Universal Binary than it was to get AlmostVPN to do a basic SSH tunnel.

AlmostVPN needs an AlmostVPN Lite for those people who are just looking for a tunnel manager.

I'm giving it 2 stars because, while it didn't crash on me, it couldn't achieve what I wanted in any kind of intuitive manner.  
(Version 1.4)

CHIGH  This is for the demo of the PRO version.

The functionality of this software looks very promising. The menubar feature is definitely what I'm wanting. I've been using SSH Tunnel Manager and it has done the trick quite well, but it has lacked a few things AlmostVPN seems to promise.

My only beef: Setting up the services is a real PITA.

Yes, I've imported my settings from SSHTM. Each of the individual "tunnel" from SSHTM would be equivalent to a Profile in AlmostVPN. Each port redirection in SSHTM is a Service. Each Profile uses one SSH Server, multiple Hosts, and multiple Services. I have two Profiles in which I'm most interested. I have one Profile setup for when I am at home and one Profile for when I am anywhere else. Each Profile is setup identically; 10 Services, a handfull of Hosts, and one SSH Server. The only difference between the two profiles is the SSH server.

When I've imported the settings from SSHTM, AlmostVPN creates both SSH servers, but only one Profile; I need two. In that one Profile, only 10 Services are listed; I would expect to see 20. Of the 10 Services which are there, I am unable to distinguish which SSH server each of the Services is using - I could be missing the elephant in the middle of the room. I can't very well use my home setup outside my own network.

So, I've embarked on setting them up individually. It isn't difficult to do, but it IS time consuming, and unfortunately, since this is still only an RC release, it likes to crash after I've created about four or five of those Services. When I reopen the System Preferences, I see I've lost at least half of them each time. The only way to avoid losing any changes I've made, is to close System Preferences after creating each service.

All in all, I've spent close to an hour trying to set it up and I lost all my settings. So, now that I have gotten the hang of it, it'll probably only take me another 15 minutes to get it back the way I want it. I'll cross my fingers that it sticks. I'd rather it import from SSHTM like I think it should. That would've been a lot easier.  
(Version 1.0rc2)

DETLEVSKI  AlmostVPN is a must have for anyone who wants to establish a secure connection.

Andrei's (developer) support is great and very helpfull.

It is also very handy for setting up a

SSH to a MySQL server with limited (only localhost) access.  
(Version 1.0rc2)

REDAGE  Not only was it starting an unauthorized internet-connection before even up to configuring. My claim to the developer was handled immedeatly, "a mistake, next version won't have anymore" so I trashe the app.

Next day I wanted to upload as usual, and got posix errors, no uploads whatsoever. Finally I found a system keychain called almostVPN, that wouln't react to any password I'd given, even not to root.

So I had to trash it with other means. After that

I could upload again.

That's true.  
(Version 1.0rc1a)

TODIXY  This is more like a question: is it possible to use this software to get ALL software diverted via ssh?I mean, if I want to use a P2P program which dowsn't support socks or anything, is this rerouted via the ssh?

In two words? is the ssh system-wide?

Thank you.  
(Version 1.0rc1)

NCIANCA  This tool rocks! Not only does it work but it's easy to setup and very flexible. If you are stuck at a clients or behind a corporate firewall that blocks your access to the outside world, you can use this to get your email, filesharing, etc.  
(Version 0.9.15)

DAU  as a dummie user i was stupid enough to install this tool without knowing what was coming upon me... network problems were solved by the admin, an now i cant access any site in the wb anymore.. can anyone help me to reset any changes almostvpn made to standard? i already uninstalled it but something remains that keeps me from accessing websites...  
(Version 0.9.14)

PIRX  The People's Republic of China has chosen to block all and any access to leapingbytes.com. I would regard that being a medal of honour, if the worlds no.1 paraniod censors are that much scared of leapingbytes.com.

But, it also poses a problem to download from leapingbytes.com.

Can you put AlmostVPN on a mirror-server somewhere?  
(Version 0.9.13)

TOMBECKENHAM  Woo hoo! This would really only make a workaholic like me happy, but I can finally access our CheckPoint VPN again from home after being without it on the Mac ever since Tiger came out last year.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Now, if there's a way to ssh to Virtual PC running on the same laptop with CheckPoint, then I'll be laughing. Possible?  
(Version 0.9.13)

MACUPDATE.3.JELWELL  My work blocks all sorts of network protocols and I've been trying for years to figure out a simple Tunnel/VPN solution to allow me to access the outside world uninhibited.

AlmostVPN is the solution! It's simple to setup. Works flawlessly and it's free. Now I can access any remote service I want through the firewall at work - all securely!

Thanks Leaping Bytes!  
(Version 0.9.12)

PIRX  Yes, brilliant app. I just love it, the simplicty of configuration together with the fool-proof help makes connecting to a VPN or tunneling a breeze.

Minor, minute problem occured:

I have experienced repetitive almostVPN freezes followed by crashes on a machine that runs OS X 10.4.3. Somehow related to the menu icon the whole app seems to go down.

No such occurrence under OS X 10.4.4.

Again, great stuff, we need more of that, for example HTTPort on OSX http://www.htthost.com  
(Version 0.9.11)

XSMURFSTER  I have to agree with Rob. This is a great app. Easy to use if you know what you're doing, but far from impossible if you don't. Speaking of not knowing what you're doing, the user guide is most excellent and very complete. The app is a pleasure to work with and as mentioned previously, Andrei is a great developer.

Great app, a must for laptop workers...  
(Version 0.9.9)

ROB  AlmostVPN is very well done. I previously used SSH Tunnel Manager to manage my ssh tunnels. But AVPN does this, and more, in an easy to use interface. Is it easy to understand? Well, that depends on if you know what it is you're doing. That is, if you understand ssh and tunnels and such, then this program is easy to understand.

In addition, the author's support is outstanding. Andrei is quick to respond to bug reports and feature requests. I made several bug reports and requests and Andrei responded nearly immediately, verified the reports I made, and fixed them. Really a pleasure to work with such a responsive developer.  
(Version 0.9.4)

ANDREI TCHIJOV  I am sorry to announce that, SMB mounting completely broken with 0.9.3 (Especially so on Panther). Hot fix (0.9.3+) is available at http://www.leapingbytes.com/downloads/almostvpn/.

Sorry for inconvenience.  
(Version 0.9.3)

ANDREI TCHIJOV  To People who do not reboot very often

If you have not reboot since you upgrade to 0.9.3, you might experience some difficulties. Some of the temporary files created by AlmostVPN which used to be own by root, now owned by you and as a result AlmostVPN can not overwrite it.

To solve the problem, please delete all files like this /tmp/almostvpn*. Or you can reboot.

Sorry for inconvenience   
(Version 0.9.3)

ANDREI TCHIJOV  To people without ~/Library/Keychain/login.keychain.

It looks like quite a few people having keychain other then "login.keychain" as a default keychain. Unfortunately AlmostVPN 0.9.3 is not smart enough to look for "a default" keychain it always looking for "login.keychain". I will fix this problem in 0.9.4 release, meanwhile - you can just create new keychain name it "login.keychain" and it should make AlmostVPN happy.

Sorry for inconvenience.  
(Version 0.9.3)

ANDREI TCHIJOV  AlmostVPN and Case Sensitive File Systems: If you have "Case Sensitive File System" and keep receiving errors "password expected" and/or "passphrase expected" it might be due to the fact that one of the support executables has incorrect casing. Look inside AlmostVPN.prefPane (Use "Show Package Content" menu). Make sure that file Contents/Resources/almostVPNTool has name "almostVPNTool" ( and not AlmostVPNTool). Also, while you there, make sure that all *.sh files are lower case.

This problem should be rectified with next release (0.9.3)  
(Version 0.9.2)

G MAN  Great idea, just doe not work! It tries to start but can never start it's daemon.

The account I have setup works but it will not run.

Sorry chaps 0 out of 10  
(Version 0.91)

SECTION 8  Awesome app! Great in port restricted environments if you need to get stuff done.  
(Version 0.9GA)

JONATHAN DALE  This is a really excellent piece of software and is great for setting up tunnels across firewalls. Also, answers to support questions are resolved extremely quickly.

Apart from the widget which could use a graphical makeover, fantastic!  
(Version 0.9rc4)

ANDREI TCHIJOV  Current version of AlmostVPN (RC3) does not like passwords with special symbols ( "!", "$", "\" ). This problem will be fixed in next release.

This is a URL to Trouble Ticket to track this issue http://www.leapingbytes.com/almostvpn/ticket/34  
(Version 0.9rc3)

DAVIS1  In what sorts of situations does one use/need a VPN?  
(Version 0.9rc2)

ANONYMOUS  APPEARS to work with 10.3.9 also (The author actually says it should work with earlier version of Mac OS X).

I haven't tested it very throughly, but so far so good.  
(Version 0.9rc1)