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Unix Operating Systems Software Businesses Apple BSD Linux

Netatalk 2.0.0 Released 66

Posted by timothy from the talk-to-me-baby dept.
SuperBanana writes "After what seems like an eternity, Netatalk (an Appletalk server suite for unix) has caught up with the latest version of the Apple Filing Protocol (aka Appleshare). This means long filenames, files larger than 2GB, and other goodies that will bring much happiness for Unix sysadmins supporting Macintosh users (check out the human-friendly release notes for the full list). As with any major release, even though this has been through several release candidates- read the gotchas, review the known bugs in their bug tracker, test it out on something non-critical...and help stabilize the release by reporting any bugs you find. Of course, make sure you read a guide to reporting bugs first!"
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Netatalk 2.0.0 Released More

Netatalk 2.0.0 Released

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  • netatalk is a godsend (Score:5, Informative)

    by Soko ( 17987 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @10:11PM (#10627729) Homepage
    ... especially when dealing with the evil AFP and OS9 gods.

    1.6.4 has a nasty habit of b0rking the CNID database (A berkely DB that contains all of those wonderful resource forks for the Mac files). You have to shut down the AFP service, repair the DB, then connect one Mac so you can fix permissions in the .AppleDB directory - even if you set the dir 2775.

    I haven't played too much with version 2 yet, but it does seem faster and more stable. I'm hoping that the DB will stay unscrambled for more than 2 weeks at a time, and that the DB daemon will honour the directory permissions.

    I compiled it from source, and the included SPEC file didn't want to let me create an RPM - if anyone has one of netatalk 2 for FC2, I would appreciate it.

    Soko
    • It was one of the few Debian packages that I held back at "stable" for a long time because new releases tended to break things for people. Hopefully with the new version upgrades will be smoother all around.

      The existence of netatalk was the main reason why, three or so years ago, I donated an old PC of mine to my department and installed Linux on it--they were using (and still are!) an ancient Novell fileserver that the Windows machines could get to but that the Macs couldn't, and everyone was amazed when
    • It's slashdotted now so see a google cache [64.233.167.104] of the homepage.

      "Netatalk is a freely-available, kernel level implementation of the AppleTalk Protocol Suite, originally for BSD-derived systems. A *NIX/*BSD system running netatalk is capable of serving many macintosh clients simultaneously as an AppleTalk router, AppleShare file server (AFP), *NIX/*BSD print server, and for accessing AppleTalk printers via Printer Access Protocol (PAP). Included are a number of minor printing and debugging utilities."

      So if I

    • i have PPC .debs if anyone's interested.

  • Urpmi? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by waffffffle ( 740489 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @10:51PM (#10627972)
    Out of curiosity, how long does it usually take for something like this to show up in urpmi? I'd like to install it that way on my Mandrake server if at all possible but right now its only offering me 1.6. Also, I've been a longtime fan of AFP. As an OS X user it offers many great advantages over SMB, specifically the ability to move a file around on the server while it is open without the application losing track of it (just like a local file on an HFS+ disk). Also, most ISPs block the SMB port since Windows viruses spread through shares but they don't block the AFP port, which makes connecting to AFP shares over IP a breeze. Although for the record I'm not so much a fan of AFP over AppleTalk. AT was good about 15 years ago but Rendezvous has made it useless nowadays.

  • God I've been waiting for this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bursch-X ( 458146 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @11:13PM (#10628096)
    Finally I can't tell you how dead-awful it is when you have a Linux box serving files, and then sitting on a Mac OS X client in all its Unicode glory having to deal with long Japanese filenames on the server (that Windows users put there) and being f***ed, because the "old" AFP protocol can't handle long filenames and going in via SMB doesn't work either, because the filenames being in Japanese cause problems, too.

  • Too late for me (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zaqattack911 ( 532040 ) on Monday October 25, 2004 @11:40PM (#10628214) Journal
    I've had to deal with 2 years of complaints from Mac users. I had to ditch the netatalk thing alltogether... due to millions of compatibility issues.

    For a brief time we thought webdav was the answer.. it seemed to work well for PCs with proper webdav clients installed, linux as well.

    OSX native webdav support is buggy as shit. So yet again all my users are happy but the OSX users.

    I might have to bite the bullet and do NFS.
    Fuck I hate nfs.

    Love,
    Zaq
    • What do you hate about NFS? Please note that I'm not deffending it, I'm merely curious.

    • If you haven't gotten around to rolling NFS out yet, aren't you even a little curious to see if it's solved your problems?

      YLFI
    • I have 2 mac os 10.3 computers both work quite well with a samba server. I have netatalk for a few older macs that we keep in the house so I'm looking forward to this new release.

    • Re:Too late for me (Score:3, Informative)

      by Benley ( 102665 )
      If you totally can't stand NFS, you *might* want to give OpenAFS a try. It's probably total overkill, but is is really neat, and once you get an AFS cell up and running it is very good. It just takes a lot of work when you first start out of the gate. I did it for these guys [uiuc.edu], and we wrote a bunch [uiuc.edu] of [uiuc.edu] documentation [uiuc.edu], and about a year later, things are really good. AFS rocks.

    • What's to hate? (Score:3, Informative)

      by solios ( 53048 )
      Aside from the !(> 2g) limit, I've had NO problems with NFS. None to speak of. Share the share, mount the share, copy shit over- no problems with Special Characters, no filename limitations... fuck, even the resource forks copy over.... and they move over CLEANER than they do with netatalk!

      Netatalk 1.6.x was a pain in the ass with OS X, and I've had too many problems with Samba to make it worth my time anymore.
    • Odd. I have a linux server with 4 mac osx systems talking to it. Works great.
    • Netatalk's behaivor can change depending on the underlying filesystem. More to the point, Netatalk is Case Indifferent. If you set up a Netatalk share on a case sensitive filesystem (the most common deployment case) the you have just created a case-sensitive AFP share. Many Mac apps Do Not Like That. For instance, I had two reading assessment apps that I could never get to work with Netatalk. The clients talked to a filebased database on an AFP share. If made an hpfs or hfs+ filesystem and shared that,

  • MacOSX port (Score:3, Funny)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @12:26AM (#10628416) Journal
    That would really be great.

  • Usually Apple does great products. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just look at the iMac, iPod and PowerBooks.
    However I don't understand why they try to revive AppleTalk.
    There are really better methods to talk to deceased operating systems, e.g. psychics are an old estabilished one while these days occult seances are becoming more and more popular.
  • Now that we have an updated Netatalk, will we also get an updated Webmin module.
    Please, please also update the Webmin module.

    Out of curiosity, does anyone know if Apple developers (officially or not) contribute to Netatalk development?

  • Before someone asks... (Score:5, Informative)

    by the JoshMeister ( 742476 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @10:26AM (#10630597) Homepage Journal


    I just know someone is going to ask this, so I'm writing this as a preemptive strike. ;o)

    Yes, there really *are* people who have files greater than 2 GB. A perfect example is hard drive images. At a previous place of employment, we imaged entire iMac hard drives and put them on a server so that the HDs could be reimaged at any time. Seeing as the iMac HD was about 6 GB, it was absolutely essential to have support for 2+ gig files. Just one example.

    • DVD images out of DVD Studio Pro are typically in the 2.5-3.8 gig range for me. Raw video files of the projects I work on start around a gig and a half and have reached upwards of 19 gigs. If you use final cut pro and don't check off the little check box that tells it to auto-segment in 2g increments, you'll wind up with some extremely large files under certain circumstances.

      Basically, anybody who deals with video has been dealing with Very Large Files for many years. Anybody who has to back the shit up

  • Does anyone still use AFP? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @10:29AM (#10630624) Homepage
    Or maybe I should ask, does anyone still use AFP in *new* installations? We have a mix of Win/Unix/Mac(OSX). The Unix/Linux workstations and Macs automount several servers via NFS when a user logs in. The Win PCs use a Samba server (ugh). More "important" data is sent via scp. Telnet and ftp have been pretty much abandoned.

    I thought that AFP was only used to support old legacy Macs running 9.2.2 or older.

    Granted there are NFS clients for Windows and for "Classic" Mac OS 9.2.2 and earlier, but most are pretty ugly.

    • Re:Does anyone still use AFP? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      AFP is the standard filing protocol on Mac OS X and has (at least for Mac Users) many advantages over NFS, SMB etc.

      AFP is based on TCP/IP, AppleTalk is used for older legacy Mac support - maybe you confused AFP with AppleTalk

    • Yep. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by solios ( 53048 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:25PM (#10633825) Homepage
      Because Samba Is Shit(tm).

      Between resource forks, HUGE files (16g+) and Special Characters SKULLFUCKERY- not to mention hideously incompetent Windows domain administration at the highest levels of corporate IT... around here, it's AFP or it's shuffled around on Firewire drives.

      Our network sucks so goddamned bad that any OS X client with Samba enabled becomes the PDC inside of a few minutes. IT insists that their incompetent administration is somehow our fault. It rules.

      Also, AFP is to Apple as SMB is to Windows. SMB isn't there for Windows boxes running WinME and older, is it? NO. It's the damned OS networking protocol. Apple didn't throw in samba support to replace AFP or NFS, they threw it in so macs can talk to PCs.

      Ideally, you'd use AFP to talk to Macs, NFS to talk to Unices, and SMB to talk to Windows boxes.

      But for some reason, every linux admin under the SUN seems to have a GIANT BONER for samba, despite its limitations.
      • But for some reason, every linux admin under the SUN seems to have a GIANT BONER for samba, despite its limitations
        Doesn't NFS do client side auth? Even though I hear remote root access is now disabled by default, that's not good enough for workstations. It's plenty fine for server-server though.

      • > But for some reason, every linux admin under the
        > SUN seems to have a GIANT BONER for samba, despite its limitations.

        *I* don't ;). Some people on IRC "look" at me funny when i mention I don't need to (nor want to) "do samba" anything. I see no point. We have no winbloze machines here, I dislike x86, and especially winbloze - either old macs that have't been "linuxed" yet, or old macs that have been "linuxed". ;)
    • OSX still has some major unaddressed issues with Samba with storage and managment of resource forks. Resource forks are stored across Samba shares as ._filename files. These filenames are created transparently by OSX -- but there's a catch. As they're a separate file, they maintain their own locks and permissions. Several OSX applications weren't written for with the idea that resource forks could be separate lockable files, and as such leave their resource forks locked! Several apps have gotten better

  • Just installed last night (Score:5, Informative)

    by ozzmosis ( 99513 ) * <ahze@ahze.net> on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @10:56AM (#10630870) Homepage Journal
    I just installed 2.0 on freebsd last night, from what little tests I have done so far afpd seems to be alot faster in this version and is just as fast as nfs.v3. I got an average of 8.43MBps with netatalk and an average of 8.54MBps with nfs. Both were bouncing back and forth on which was faster.

    Longer file names are also supported! This is a huge plus if you have long file names (ie. mp3s)
    • Which is great, as anyone who's moved off of OS 9 onto OS X has likely generated a few long file names, and anyone who does video gets to deal with Big Shit.

      Previously, I had to use NFS for all of the files under two gigs and Samba for everything over (NFS version in Debian Stable doesn't do > 2g files), which made drag-and-drop backups extremely tedious.

      Now, it just totally rules. I can drop a media drive onto a netatalk mount and walk away. No need to babysit anymore.

      Since this has been a huge iss
  • I'm using AFP to connect to our file server here from my main desktop, but other machines connect using Samba. The problem is that I constantly have to change permissions on files I create because they default to 755 or 644, whereas in Samba I can force this to 775 or 664. Anyone know how to configure AFP to force a different mask?

  • AGH. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by solios ( 53048 ) on Tuesday October 26, 2004 @03:14PM (#10633709) Homepage
    I just built from source LAST WEEK.

    On the upside, it was the first bit of anything I've had to build from source that actually Built and Worked. o.o

    This FINALLY solves some SERIOUS data moving problems I've been having at work for the past couple of years. :D
  • As I recall, there were problems doing AppleTalk over serial stuff. I have an old Mac IIsi that I might hook up for grins if so. I have an Ethernet card, but it's busy in my SE/30 running my website. :->

    • IIRC (so don't take this for gospel):
      AppleTalk over serial == LocalTalk,
      AppleTalk over ethernet == EtherTalk,
      AppleTalk over token ring == TokenTalk.

      You'd need something to convert the physical layer to get the IIsi online though. I bought a relatively rare LT/EN bridge by lurking on a Mac list several months ago. Now I've got my ancient LaserWriter 4/600 (serial connection only) on my network, and Panther prints to it just fine.

      • Re:So, can you hook up a Mac via a serial connecti (Score:4, Interesting)

        by kris_lang ( 466170 ) on Thursday October 28, 2004 @09:19AM (#10652530)
        Nice.

        I've actually got an old 700 (quadra) and some SE-30s that want to talk to my serial laserwriter, but the laserwriter's fuser hardware has gotten melty and gummed up. Do you know of a good way to emulate an apple laserwriter on a serial port on a linux box and hook up the apple's RS-422 to the serial port and make it think that the linux-box is a post-script level one printer?

        I've tried simple things like making a linux serial console and running GS on it but the mac's couldn't make it through. And my old computer with two serial ports on it which I could use to peek at serial protocols is stuck in storage (mold problems... water leakage everywhere... >$30k hardware damaged as attic-collapsed-from-water-weight... ) so I can't probe it to make a serial emulator. Is there a quick and dirty way to do this for older macs that don't have ethernet availability?

        • So the Linux box would capture the print job and then do something with it? I'd love to help, but this kind of thing (serial protocols, etc) is outside my bailiwick. I'll point you to the MaX list at LEM [lowendmac.com] though. That's where I ask all these sorts of questions, since it involves *n*x. Signal to noise there is very high, which is nice.

        • Also, if you could find one of those bridges, you could put the Mac on your network via its serial port. If your other devices spoke AppleTalk, you might have a solution. Using netatalk on the Linux box to translate and route print jobs? You can find these bridges on eBay, though they tend to go for a bit more than I really wanted to pay. There's actually one there right now, ending today.

          Like I've said, I may be talking out of my butt here. Networking and low-level protocol stuff really is not a str

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