Gmail FS

If you have a Gmail account, a great acessory is Gmail File System. It's free and it works pretty nicely into a windows operating system (with a little tweaking of course). It took me a while to get it configured right, so I thought I would write this little tutorial.

First thing I did is create a new account. Then I installed GmailFS. This is where the work comes in, getting your firewall configured right. The GmailFS runs through the Windows Explorer Shell, so be careful how much access this program has to the internet. You need to let through three things to get it to work properly; DNS, Google.com (for account authentication), and gmail.google.com. Using your log of firewall activities will make this alot easier. First, create expert rules that allow outgoing connect to Gmail and Google (with Zone Alarm, just add in the host and it looks up the IP address). Then create a rule that blocks everything (the first rule should have presedence over the later, this keeps other programs from going in or out). Then try to access you Gmail Drive from your "My Computer". It should pop back an error to you. Examine your firewall log; you should see a UDP request looking something like *.*.1.1:53, this is the DSN request. Create a new rule which allow an outging connect with that IP and that only allows a UDP connect for DNS on port 53, and that should do it.

Hope this helps. Enjoy.
Nate

Sources:
Gmail
Gmail File System
Zone Alarm