Re: guide to setting up netatalk on Ubuntu, with Apple II netboot

[Hugh Hood <hughhood@earthlink.net>]

Ivan,

Your AppleTalk-in-OS X history timeline seems pretty accurate. I must admit
that I find it's sometimes difficult to keep all those changes straight in
my mind.

I'm really looking forward to the results of your attempts to build Netatalk
on the OS X Versions pre-10.6, particularly 10.4 and 10.5, which still have
at least some of the AppleTalk protocols in place in their respective
kernels.

My suspicion is that the real cause of the ever-increasing limitations on
the file serving capabilities in OS X (at least as it concerns the Apple II
and early Macs that use AFP 2.x over AppleTalk) is the AppleFileServer
application (which, AFAIK, was never released to the OpenDarwin source), and
that the AppleTalk coding itself was never crippled or dumbed down between
OS X versions.

If I'm mistaken, I concede that I don't hold much hope for getting Netatalk
_running under OS X_ to serve files to our Apple II computers.

Of course, even if my suspicion is correct and the OS X AppleTalk
implementation (pre-10.6) is still up to the job, someone (you, perhaps)
still has to get Netatalk to interface with it.

Thanks for taking a stab at it. Really.




Hugh Hood 




in article C8B7B120.204FB%ivanxqz@yahoo.com, Ivan X at ivanxqz@yahoo.com
wrote on 9/16/10 10:33 AM:

> Here's my memory of AppleTalk in Mac OS X, which might very well be wrong
> both due to hazy memory and a limited understanding of AppleTalk; please
> correct what I've got wrong.
> 
> AFP 3.0 was introduced in Mac OS X, with TCP/IP as the primary transport
> mechanism, but AppleTalk still supported. Through 10.3.9, Mac OS X had more
> or less bidirectional compatibility with AFP 2.x clients (Mac OS X 7.5.3, if
> not older, through 9.2.2).
> 
> 10.4 eliminated the client -- you can't connect to an AppleTalk-based
> server. An AppleTalk-based client can still connect, but once machine
> discovery is complete, the two computers communicate via TCP/IP, which the
> AppleTalk packets are encapsulated within. (This might be true for earlier
> OS X versions too, I can't remember.)
> 
> 10.5 retained AppleTalk only for printing; no file sharing in either
> direction.
> 
> 10.6 excised the last vestiges of AppleTalk. In fact, you can't even connect
> to a 10.6 server from an AFP 2.x client via TCP/IP, which mystified me --
> one explanation I found was that when an AFP 2.x client connects, even via
> TCP/IP, it's still encapsulated AppleTalk, which Snow Leopard wants nothing
> to do with.
> 
> I'll try the netatalk compile on a few different versions of OS X. My guess
> is that whatever AppleTalk headers or libraries or whatever it is that
> netatalk is looking for aren't in the same place or available in the same
> way.
> 
> 
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