Subject: Re: [netatalk-admins] atalk for Digital Unix 4.0
From: Stefan Bethke (stefan@promo.de)
Date: Wed Mar 24 1999 - 05:47:55 EST
"Jeremy J. Reichman" <jjracc@osfmail.isc.rit.edu> wrote:
> - HELIOS' EtherShare seems to be the frontrunner, IMHO. It's commercial
> and the main drawback (from my tech support department's point of view)
> is its requirement of a kernel module. This requirement may only be
> necessary for AppleTalk, not AFP over TCP/IP, based on speculation
> related to other products.
IMHO, having a kernel module for AppleTalk is more sane. If your only
concern is AFP-over-TCP, you should be able to compile Adrians afpd (it
seems to have some hooks in it to throw out all AppleTalk-related stuff).
afpd runs fine even if you don't have AppleTalk in the kernel.
EtherShare won't work without it's kernel module. Due to technical problems
in the kernel module implementation in Digital Unix, Helios chose to use
the old-fashioned way of rebuilding the kernel. The installer takes care of
this for you (but you can do it yourself if you want to).
> - Even EtherShare may have problems integrating with samba; the
> recommendation seems to be to use EtherShare for both Mac and Windows
> file sharing (there's a companion Windows server product).
EtherShare (as well as IPT's uShare) implement fixed file id's. Because
Mac clients usually reference files on the volume by their file id (or dir
id + filename), a database keeps track of id->path relations. Obviously,
this database must be kept in sync with the actual file system contents.
If you move or rename files "behind the back" of the file server, the
database gets out of sync, and "funny" things start happening. Helios
provides a number of replacement command line utilities for mv, cp, et al.
that know how to deal with these data.
Unfortunatly, for these reasons, you can't run Samba on an EtherShare
volume without risking serious problems. Helios has announced PCShare 3,
which will be a SMB server tightly integrated with EtherShare (and the
prepress products).
> - I haven't seen much info about netatalk integrating with samba.
Works flawlessly. I didn't dare to enably fixed dirid support in
netatalk+asun yet, but I expect similiar problems if the id database gets
out of sync with the actual file system contents.
> - There is a samba port for Digital UNIX, as I understand. (Thus, our
> tech support is pushing us to use DAVE for our Macs. Not a trivial
> installation, maintenance, or training task.)
Quite simply: don't do it.
> - I've "suggested" (much more strongly than that) that Apple include SMB
> networking with future system releases since testing Mac OS 7.6. Of
> course, in the upcoming Mac OS X era, this may be a moot point -- Mac OS
> X will probably support a port samba for the client access side.
While Mac OS X might include a SMB client sometime (heck, you'll probably
can already run smbclient), file id's seem to be here to stay. Rumor has it
that Apple might even nuke UFS as soon as HFS+ support is feature complete
and stable. So using Mac OS X *as a client* to a SMB server probably won't
work better than with Mac OS 8, if the programs continue to use file ids.
> - My university would love to have a netatalk port for Digital UNIX.
Shouldn't be too hard for someone having the right tools. Both a 4.4BSD and
a STREAM kernel module are available (for *BSD and Solaris, resp.)
Alternatively, throw out Digital Unix and use Linux or *BSD on your Alphas
:-)
Stefan
-- Stefan Bethke Promo Datentechnik | Tel. +49-40-851744-18 + Systemberatung GmbH | Fax. +49-40-851744-44 Eduardstrasse 46-48 | e-mail: stefan@Promo.DE D-20257 Hamburg | http://www.Promo.DE/
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