Almost VPN Connection works great when you have situation like this.

http://www.leapingbytes.com/downloads/almostvpn/cookbook/images/connection-ssh-to-email.png

Almost VPN makes latte "to think" that it has IP address 2.3.4.5 (along with what ever other "real" IP address it has) and all traffic to slidingpenguin gets directed to ssh tunnel.

Unfortunately, quite often we have slightly different situation

http://www.leapingbytes.com/downloads/almostvpn/cookbook/images/connection-ssh-is-email.png

Why it does not work now? Because the second Almost VPN made latte "to think" that it has IP address of jumpingrodent ( 1.2.3.4 ), ALL traffic for 1.2.3.4 will go to latte including SSH traffic. So effectively it means that instead of SSHing to jumpingrodent we SSH to localhost/latte.

Solution is quite simple. All we need to do is to make latte think that proper IP address for jumpingrodent is not 1.2.3.4 but something else (to make thing simpler let's make it 127.0.0.1)

http://www.leapingbytes.com/downloads/almostvpn/cookbook/images/connection-ssh-to-email-new.png

To make latte start to think that IP address of jumpingrodent is 127.0.0.1 AlmostVPN creates new entry in NetInfo? database. This change affect only latte and it is "in effect" only while AlmostVPN profile is running. Once it is stopped, correct name to address mapping is restored.

NOTE: To make things work the way I described above, AlmostVPN need to make sure that LookupOrder? is correct one ( NIS will be asked before other sources ). You can read here about steps AlmostVPN performs to make it happen (again, all changes are in-effect only while AlmostVPN profile is running. When it stops, all settings are restored)

NOTE: If you are curios, you can read more about NIS here

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Networking/Conceptual/Open_Directory/Chapter1/chapter_2_section_3.html
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/opendirectory