Progress with netatalk on Seagate DockStar

[pitz <pitz.wong@gmail.com>]

I've been working on this the past several nights and just wanted to
provide some progress info.

I'm using the Debian "squeeze" (testing) distribution because it has
support for the armel processor that the Seagate DockStar has.  Debian
installation notes on http://peterwong.net/blog/?p=115

The netatalk package (2.1.2) "worked" right after installation.  I did
have to enable the atalkd service in the netatalk configuration. Using
Marsha's modified AppleShare CDEV in an Apple IIgs allowed me to mount
the share using cleartext authentication.  Randnum authentication (if
you're concerned about plaintext passwords going through your network)
is not supported because the randnum UAM is not built in the netatalk
package.

Although I could rebuild the randnum UAM using openssl, I'm instead
modifying it to use GnuTLS/libgcrypt.  I know there are some concerns
regarding the performance of libgcrypt (vs openssl), but for UAM
purposes, it may not be that significant.  Besides, converting it to
use libgcrypt will eventually make it acceptable for the maintainers
to merge it upstream, so that future netatalk packages will have it
pre-built.  I think pre-OS9 (or some earlier version) Macs only has
randnum support, so I've read requests for this modification in other
places.  I'm more than halfway with this modification and will be
testing some builds as early as tonight.

Another reason I'm building the randnum UAM is that although Marsha's
CDEV supports cleartext authentication, the IIgs netboot login still
rejects my cleartext credentials.  If netatalk could offer randnum
authentication, then the IIgs netboot login should be able to use
that.  Anybody know how to patch the IIgs netboot login in the same
way Marsha did for the CDEV so that cleartext auth works?

I also noticed that the netatalk a2boot service is not pre-built, so I
had to rebuild that again.  I think it works as it is.  Netbooting the
IIgs (using guest auth), has brought me as far as receiving the same
"Your startup
configuration has not been set up properly" that Ivan had initially
encountered.  Some fiddling with the ATINIT files is next on my task
list (right after getting randnum/libgcrypt working).  Thanks to Ivan
for posting the necessary setup for Apple IIe netbooting at
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.apple2/browse_thread/thread/6ff4f3112722e8a8

I'll hopefully have the same for the IIgs soon.