Fun with GatorBoxen and netatalk

[salfter@salfter.dyndns.org (Scott Alfter)]

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A while back, I had gotten a 10Base-T transceiver for my GatorBox CS (the
transceiver is an HP 28685B, but any AUI-to-twisted-pair transceiver ought
to work the same) so that I would need one less bit of hardware on my
network.  (Previously, I was connecting the GatorBox to a D-Link DES-802
10/100 switch with some coax and going from that into the Linksys 10/100 hub
that feeds most of the computers at my desk...going from LocalTalk to Fast
Ethernet is like hooking a straw to a fire hydrant.  Going from LocalTalk to
Ethernet, by comparison, is only like hooking a straw to a garden hose. :-) )

Somewhere along the way, the GatorBox had managed to lose its settings,
though.  I put it aside until today, when I decided to play with it a bit
more.  I hooked it back into my Quadra 610 so I could assign it an IP
address and set up LocalTalk bridging.  I also set up MacIP while I was at
it...used MacSSH to log into the Linux server through LocalTalk.  Once
Marinetti adds MacIP support, having it enabled in the GatorBox will be a
Good Thing (TM).

Upon moving the GatorBox back to the IIGS, though, I couldn't log into the
netatalk server as anything other than guest.  I think that I had tweaked
something the wrong way in netatalk's config files.  My Mac wouldn't log in,
either...strange, since it worked when I first fired it up.

I had been running an older version of netatalk...1.4b2, which has been said
by some to work best with the Apple II.  It had the random-number exchange
authentication patch applied, but it still wouldn't work.  I could tell it
to use my account on the server instead of nobody as the guest account, but
that's not too secure.  I've set netatalk to only bind to eth1 (on an
RFC1918 network) and not to eth0 (through a cable modem to the Internet),
but having guest access linked to my files still didn't sound like a bright
idea.  

I decided to give the latest version of netatalk a shot...worst thing that
could happen is it wouldn't work.  I grabbed v1.5.3.1 from SourceForge and
built it with shadow-password support, telling it to install in a directory
where it wouldn't interfere with the older version.  I rebooted to kill the
older netatalk (you can't restart it after you kill it; you have to reboot)
and started the processes for the newer netatalk manually.

As long as afpd is started with "-U uams_randnum.so" and as long as a
password is set up with afppasswd, I can now log into netatalk from my IIGS
with passworded authentication.  As an added bonus, if the password is saved
on the IIGS and the share is checked to mount automatically after a reboot,
it actually comes back by itself after a reboot.  The older version never
did that.

The auxtype information appears to be flipped around...IIRC, I had patched
the older netatalk to return correct information.  Looking at a directory on
the server with some ShrinkIt archives, some have auxtype $8002 (correct)
while others have $0280 (incorrect).  Looks like I need to track that down
and fix it...some saved email I have on the subject might have some ideas
for fixing that.

On the Linux side, the newer netatalk can be stopped and restarted as much
as you want without having to reboot the server.  That's nice for keeping
your uptime high.  I wrote a script for the /etc/init.d directory that works
with Linux From Scratch to automate bringing netatalk up and down...not too
big a deal there.  The only config file I needed to modify was atalkd.conf,
which had one line copied from atalkd.conf used previously:

eth1 -phase 2 -net 25600 -addr 25600.6 -zone "etalk"

The GatorBox is set up to use network number 25599 and zone name "atalk" for
LocalTalk, with "soft seed port" selected.  It uses network number 25600 and
zone name "etalk" for Phase 2 EtherTalk, also with "soft seed port"
selected.

A short while ago, someone asked about firmware updates for the GatorBox CS. 
Netopia had these updates available a few months ago, but they've since been
removed.  I still have the files sitting around here; if anyone's
interested, I can mail them out.  I have the final versions of GatorKeeper
and GatorInstaller (MacOS-based management utilities), GatorSystem (base
firmware), GatorPrint (print server update), and GatorShare (NFS-to-AFP
proxy) available...since these were free downloads, I don't think the
newsgroup's IP Nazis have anything to bitch about.

  _/_
 / v \  Scott Alfter (salfter@salfter.dyndns.org)
(IIGS(  http://salfter.dyndns.org
 \_^_/  rm -rf /bin/laden

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