Re: ProDOS, OS X and Netatalk

[Steven Hirsch <snhirsch@gmail.com>]

Hugh Hood wrote:

> Netatalk (2.0.5) is available from Macports, so installation shouldn't be
> too bad.

Check the configuration process to be sure it builds against the SSL 
libraries. Those are essential for login from a IIGS (IIe workstation card can 
do cleartext).

> Netatalk  will handle the AFP 2.2 that the IIGS uses. Moreover, thanks to
> Steven Hirsch's efforts, Netatalk supports ProDOS and Apple II clients.

Glad to be of help.  Unfortunately, the netatalk maintainers have been 
reticent to accept patches, so I stopped submitting them about 8-9 years ago. 
There were a couple of problems that had to be fixed in the Ubuntu package, 
for example: One was to build with libssl and the other fixed an issue where 
it wasn't properly preserving file dates.

> I'll hook this up with a Farallon Localtalk to Ethertalk device and give it
> a go. 
>
> I had done this same thing a couple of years ago on an OS X 10.3 (Panther)
> setup using OS X's built-in AppleTalk file sharing, but ran into the same
> issue as Roger Johnstone (and others) reported many years ago in this
> newsgroup, that being:
>
> > The bigger problem is that Apple 'repurposed' a flag originally used for
> > storing ProDOS files on a Mac volume. As a result while the IIGS can
> > read files fine from the Mac it can't write any files to it. [without
> >  receiving an error message, that is]

I'm not sure exactly what that's about, but I strongly suspect it's in 
reference to Appletalk Server running on an older Mac.  As far as netatalk is 
concerned, Mac OSX is "just another unix-like environment".  There shouldn't 
be any serious technical hurdles at that low level.

> Has anyone here used Netatalk on an OS X machine and sucessfully written
> files from the IIGS to the Mac? Also, are file attributes (Type/Creator)
> preserved?

Again, you can expect the same results from netatalk regardless of whether the 
platform is Linux or OSX.  Some of the fiddling I did with netatalk had to do 
with Type/Creator, but I do think those made it into the official sources.

Give a yell here if you run into problems.  In theory, getting it going should 
be simple. In practice, it can be a pitched battle sometimes :-).

Steve