What is "racoon"

My Mac Pro has been doing some unusual things like one of my saved widgets from Accuweather, shows Cupertino as the city instead of my city of San Antonio, TX. This prompted a comparison of Activity Monitor between my Mac Pro and a 15" MacBook Pro that are both running OS X 10.5.8. Most of the differences in processes that were running were due to different programs loaded on each machine. However, there was one on the Mac Pro that I'm not sure of, and Apple Care support didn't have an answer either, and that is "racoon."

147 racoon root 0.0 1 1.00 MB 586.13 MB Intel




As you see, it is a "root" process that, to me, should be a part of the OS, right? But, this "racoon" process is not on my MBP. Even stranger is, a search of my Mac Pro for 'racoon' shows that it resides on another HD as a ".conf" file in a folder I took from my last G5 in May of 2008. Although I don't recall doing it, I must have transferred my files from that G5 to this Mac Pro.

As for the strange behavior of my Mac Pro not holding some settings, Apple support says the PRAM battery is not the problem, and that this is leaning towards an "Archive and Install" of the OS. So, before I do that, I wanted to post here for a possible explanation as to why "racoon" is on one 10.5.8 machine and not the other, and just what does "racoon" do.

Thanks

GG

Message was edited by: Gruene Guy

Message was edited by: Gruene Guy