Extra Pepperoni

Q: I have several rules to mark bulk messages as read. How stupid is it that Outlook 2003 beeps, shows me the new mail notifier window, shows the new message in my “Unread Mail” filter; and then marks the message read and hides it?

A: Very.

It’s difficult to get a mailbox (”Search Folder”) or View/Filter to update; I’ve hit F5 (Refresh) several times, and watched read messages drop out of my “Unread Mail” search most times (but not reliably), but I haven’t had the patience to keep hitting F5 enough to see if the list of messages would eventually correct itself. I’ve switched to other mailboxes and back, but that doesn’t work most of the time either.

I just got a 1tb Time Capsule — it was a natural accessory for my new MBP, since I finally have a Mac with 802.11n support, and I routinely move large files or folders (500gb-8gb) around our home network; I also like the GE ports.

The Capsule replaced a WRT54G (hacked) and an AirPort Extreme — the APE is now serving as a print server in WDS mode (overkill, but otherwise it would just sit on a shelf, and the print server is handy). It is also providing backup space for all three of our laptops (including Julia’s), and the magic of Time Machine seems like a good security vs. convenience compromise — keeping conventional AFP or SMB shares from reppep.com mounted all the time on all three laptops would be suboptimal. Time Machine seems to handle mounting & unmounting gracefully.

On to the meat of my problem, though: Once I set up the Time Capsule, I noticed my MBP (10.5.2 latest) was getting the TC’s IP as its only DNS server via DHCP. This is annoying, as I configured the TC with 2 upstream DNS servers, and I want it to configure my Macs with at least those two; if the TC inserts itself first that’s fine, but it shouldn’t be my only nameserver.

The problem is aggravated (considerably!) by the fact that the TC is not actually serving names. My dig queries against it all time out.

On a related note, nmap points out that the Capsule is running an FTP server, which I (fortunately) cannot actually log into. I don’t see FTP anywhere in the UI or help (aside from a note about forwarding FTP through NAT). FTP is evil, and I don’t want it on at all! I know why ports 139 & 445 are open — to support SMB/CIFS and WINS, which I could configure but cannot turn off — but why RTSP and RealServer ports, and port 10,000?? I cannot get anything out of 10,000, so it’s not a normal Webmin, but what is Apple doing here??

I filed 3 bugs against Time Capsule, one against AirPort Admin Utility, and one against SP:Network, which I discovered while working around the TC DNS issue.

Meanwhile, I’m not holding my breath for answers & fixes from Apple. Do you all have more information about what’s going on here? Do TC users find a) the TC is the only only nameserver assigned via DHCP, and b) it doesn’t actually work as a nameserver??