Netatalk on Solaris baby-FAQ

It seems like I see a lot of the same questions on the netatalk-admins mailing list, so I thought--what the hell, why not a web page? I'll keep working on this until I discover that someone else has already done a better job.

If you have a server on fire, it didn't come from here.

What version of netatalk should I run?

Wesley Craig suggested this question, as well as the answer:

ftp://terminator.rs.itd.umich.edu/pub/n-971027.tar.gz

It appears that this version contains the newly rewritten Solaris kernel module. I still have no first hand experience with it, but I have heard nothing but good reports of it.

How can I use the A Sun version for AFP/TCP support?

You might want to use the new kernel module for AppleTalk support, but also use the 'asun' version to get support for AFP over TCP/IP. If so, check this out.

Why Can't I Print, Dammit?

Note: I haven't tried the latest version--it contains some notes for using lp as well as a script to use with the lp system.

Netatalk wants to directly twiddle the bits of a BSD lpr spool directory. Solaris 2 uses the SYSV lp system, so that won't work. Even if you use LPRng, a BSD-like lpr replacement, Netatalk still won't work out of the box.

There was someone who posted a patch to netatalk-admins that would allow papd to control an LPRng spool directory, but I can't find it anymore. I'll keep looking.

The only way I've ever used papd successfully (though I haven't worked on it a long while) by calling 'lpr' directly, though you could use 'lp' if you felt like it.

Sample papd.conf

Color LaserJet 5M, Fisher 201\:LaserWriter@Fishnet:\
	:pr=|/path/to/lpr -Pprinter:\
	:op=daemon:\
	:pd=/usr/local/atalk/etc/ppd/hpclj5m.ppd

What's a PPD and how do I get one?

This question is answered here.

How do I specify interfaces?

Russ Wright <wright@LBL.Gov> said it nicely, in reference to a message about "atalkd: can't get interfaces, exiting:"

To: phils@MIT.EDU, netatalk-admins@umich.edu
Subject: Re: [netatalk-admins] pre-a15-4_tar.gz and solaris

You probably didn't add the line to /usr/local/atalk/etc/atalkd.conf that
specifies the network interface (le0 on many systems, hme0 on mine). That
is noted in the README.SOLARIS file.

Russ

But if you have more than one interface, you'll want to follow Adrian Sun's <asun@zoology.washington.edu> advice:

this should be a FAQ. atalkd treats aliased interfaces as real
ones. as a result, you either need to setup your atalkd.conf to treat
your linux box as a router between the different interfaces or make
sure that it doesn't try to query the aliased interfaces. to do the
latter, just stick something like the following as the only line in
atalkd.conf:

	eth0 -phase 2 -net 0-65534 -addr .

Why do my icons jump around? I'm using OS8

Adrian Sun again takes a moment to explain this here.

How can I stop afpd panics on Sun Ultra hme interfaces?

Make sure you are running the latest version of netatalk, and ensure that you have applied the latest patches for the hme driver.

At this writing, the required patches were:

 
    104212-13	SunOS 5.5.1: /kernel/drv/hme patch 
    105795-05	SunOS 5.6: /kernel/drv/hme patch

You may wish to check this patch listing from SunSolve to ensure they really are the latest. My last check was Oct 30, 1998.

What are some other resources?

Netatalk FAQ-O-Matic
Netatalk Home Page
Solaris 2 FAQ

Why does this page look like crap?

Oh yeah!? Yo mama!

Last Marginally Updated Wed Sep 30 01:09:26 EDT 1998
This paged written and sporadically updated by spam-hater edan at mtu.edu

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