netatalk faq

1. General Information

• 1.1 What is netatalk?
  
• 1.2 What is the current version of netatalk?
  
• 1.3 What's in store for the future of netatalk?
  
• 1.4 Where can I get netatalk?
  
• 1.5 What's this acronym mean?
  
• 1.6 What platforms does netatalk support?
  
• 1.7 How difficult would it be to port netatalk to machine X?
  
• 1.8 What's the difference between netatalk and CAP?
  
• 1.9 Is there more help available outside this faq?
  
• 1.10 How do I pronounce netatalk?
  

2. Troubleshooting

• 2.1 Users can't log into afpd, but guest works fine.
  
• 2.2 When I create a folder on a netatalk/afpd volume, I get an Access Denied error, but the folder is created anyway.
  
• 2.3 I've put a .paprc someplace, but I can't get printing to work with lpd/psf/pap.
  
• 2.4 I'm trying to use papd on SunOS, but I always get connection timed out. I get a message in syslog about /dev/printer not being found.
  
• 2.5 How do I disable CR/LF translation?
  
• 2.6 I want to support shadowed passwords.
  

1.1 What is netatalk?

netatalk is a kernel-level implementation of the AppleTalk Protocol Suite, originally for BSD-derived systems. It includes support for routing AppleTalk, serving Unix and AFS filesystems over AFP (AppleShare), serving Unix printers and accessing AppleTalk printers over PAP. A number of other minor printing and debugging utilities are also included.

1.2 What is the current version of netatalk?

The latest full release is: 1.3.3
The latest beta release is: 1.4b2

1.3 What's in store for the future of netatalk?

1.4b3 is on its way soon. The solaris kernel module is rewritten, eliminating many routing problems and kernel panics. Support for papd printing has been added, and there are plans for piped printing with papd in the works.

1.4 full-release will follow soon.

Changes in 1.4.x may include fixed directory-IDs and ATP in the kernel, with dynamically calculated retry timers. ADSP might show up. A portion of the NBP table could go into the kernel, so that NBP entries go away magically when sockets are closed. We are considering adding AppleTalk over PPP to a freely redistributible PPP implementation.

1.4 Where can I get netatalk?

here.

1.5 What's this acronym mean?

DDP - Datagram Delivery Protocol
RTMP - Routing Table Maintenance Protocol
NBP - Name Binding Protocol
ZIP - Zone Information Protocol
AEP - AppleTalk Echo Protocol
ATP - AppleTalk Transaction Protocol
PAP - Printer Access Protocol
ASP - AppleTalk Session Protocol
AFP - AppleTalk Filing Protocol
aecho - send AppleTalk Echo Protocol packets to network hosts
atalk - AppleTalk protocol family
atalkd - AppleTalk RTMP, NBP, ZIP and AEP manager
papd - AppleTalk printer daemon
psf - Postscript Filter
psorder - PostScript pageorder filter
routednetwork routing daemon
ifconfigconfigure network interface parameters

1.6 What platforms does netatalk support?

• AIX: No longer supported.
• FreeBSD: v2.2 and after contains support for netatalk.
• Irix/SGI: A port is neither existent, nor in the works.
• Linux: 1.3.x comes with AppleTalk support in the kernel, and netatalk 1.3.3 contains support for Linux.
• NetBSD: current now includes netatalk kernel support. The first official release to include this will be NetBSD 1.3. As far as netatalk is concerned, the final version of 1.4 will contain this support.
• NeXT: We are no longer working on a port.
• Solaris: 2.4 and greater has beta support in netatalk-1.4b2.
• SparcLinux: patches by Tom Dyas exist, and may be incorparated soon.
• Ultrix: supported in both 1.3.3 and 1.4b2.

1.7 How difficult would it be to port netatalk to machine X?

It depends. For BSD-derived machines, expect to need full source. For sysV machines, porting the STREAMS version of netatalk may be easy.

1.8 What's the difference between netatalk and CAP?

The primary difference between netatalk and CAP is structure, in two ways. First, netatalk is a kernel-level implementation of AppleTalk. This means that packet reception in general and routing in particular are both efficient and easy to implement. It also means that new link-layers (e.g. we support some FDDIs, one could add PPP) can easily be added. CAP, on the other hand, relies on several less efficient tho more available methods (e.g. DDP-over-UDP, NIT, Berkeley Packet Filters).

The second structural difference is in coding style. netatalk is an integration of AppleTalk into the Berkeley Unix networking paradigm. All of the semantics useful to the UDP/TCP programmer are useful to the netatalk-AppleTalk programmer, e.g. sendto(), select(). In contrast, CAP is written with the semantics of MacOS.

All of the above differences are of primary interest to the developer and administrator. The end user will probably only notice that netatalk is somewhat faster than CAP (an artifact of both the architecture and coding style).

1.9 Is there more help available outside this faq?

The mail archive of our mailing list has proved helpful to many, as well as our netatalk-related links

1.10 How do I pronounce netatalk?

Ah, good question! The unenlightened often mis-pronounce this word \'net-'a-to.k\. The correct pronunciation is \'ned-*-to.k\ (the 't' is soft, like d, and the first 'a' is a schwa).

2.1 Users can't log into afpd, but guest works fine.

Look wherever syslog logs the LOG_DAEMON facility. You are likely to find a message like "illegal shell /bin/tcsh for bob". This is because afpd uses getusershell(3) to verify that users have valid shells. getusershell reads /etc/shells. It's also possible you need shadowed password support.

2.2 When I create a folder on a netatalk/afpd volume, I get an Access Denied error, but the folder is created anyway.

This is a very common configuration error. The user is not in the group of the parent directory. Then the Mac attempts to set the group of the newly created directory to be the same as the parent, this error is generated. The fix is the change the group of the directory to a group the user is a member of.

2.3 I've put a .paprc someplace, but I can't get printing to work with lpd/psf/pap.

When pap is run by psf, which is run by lpd, its working directory is the spool directory as assigned in /etc/printcap. Therefore the .paprc must be in the spool directory. pap logs error to stdout, which will appear in the log file assigned in /etc/printcap.

2.4 I'm trying to use papd on SunOS, but I always get connection timed out. I get a message in syslog about /dev/printer not being found.

You've upgraded Suns lpd system with one of several security patches. It moved /dev/printer to /dev/lpd/printer. My current suggestion is to make a symlink from /dev/printer to /dev/lpd/printer. Maybe later we'll have netatalk check for both.

2.5 How do I disable CR/LF translation?

To completely disable all CRLF translation, you should remove -DCRLF from afpd's Makefile.

2.6 I want to support shadowed passwords.

If your system uses shadowed passwords, add "-DSHADOWPW" to the "CFLAGS=" portion of the Makefile in etc/afpd.

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