Subject: Re: Darwin
From: John Hulley (j.hulley@rca.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Apr 05 2000 - 06:35:09 EDT
Jonathan wrote:
>
> >Apple's open source project Darwin supposedly contains
> >real Appletalk code. I don't know exactly how the
> >netatalk implementations were designed but Darwin must
> >be able to assist with development. After all, Apple
> >should know what they are doing.
>
> Adrian Sun is apparently looking at porting to OS X Server (and,
> therefore, Darwin). Apple's AppleTalk stack seems pretty good,
> although it is unclear to me whether it is a part of the kernel.
> After all, it is invoked from the command line (/usr/sbin/appletalk).
> I may be wrong, though.
>
> >If I'm wrong, please let me know, as I've only been
> >acquainted with netatalk for about 6months.
>
> If Darwin's AFP server is the same one that OS X uses then it, to put
> not too fine a point on it, sucks. Hard. Netatalk is far more
> elegant and easily configured. I wish I'd just bought an extra
> FreeBSD box these days. Sigh.
Indeed, last summer I looked long and hard at various AFP servers,
including OS X Server. Unfortunately it looks like someone took
MacOS Appleshare/IP and did a bad port. The intergration with
netinfo/lookupd is lacking and renders the server useless when
wanting to provide services to thousands of users.
Anyway, the thing that I did notice while looking over the Darwin
source code is that the AppleTalk protocol stack looks like it has
been written to conform to the standard BSD modular way of implementing
protocols. As such it would seem a trivial port to FreeBSD (and the
other BSDs). The only thing I can see standing in the way is the
licensing issues.
-- john.
-- John Hulley, Network Admin, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London mailto:wjh@rca.ac.uk | mailto:wjh@world.std.com | mailto:wjh@acm.org http://www.rca.ac.uk/ | http://world.std.com/~wjh/ | http://www.acm.org/
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