Subject: new FAQ, pt. 1 (long)
From: Karen A Swanberg (swanberg@tc.umn.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 04 2001 - 20:39:00 EDT
Here's my first version of a FAQ, to be added to the current, or whatever
else the maintainers want to do with it. I'm posting it to see of there
are any glaring errors, if people want me to answer other questions, or
any other comments. It hasn't been spell-checked, don't worry about the
any typos.
Notes - I'm writing this for a newbie reader; as one person once said to
me the target audience for this software is an overworked high-school
admin who is maintaining a lab in her spare time, not a *bsd god.
Nevertheless, if there are any simplications which I have done which
confuse things, please let me know. I intend on putting in a "how to make
netatalk play nice(r) with samba" section too, if anyone has any
suggestions for it, PLEASE, let me know.
Three main questions I still have:
Where does netatalk.conf fit into all of this? It seems that it's
redundant in a lot of ways. Is this a file that is staring to be used like
smb.conf, it's just not there yet?
What's the final solution (or has it been solved) for the trash problems?
Both the "delete files immediately" and the files getting stuck in there
with permission problems?
Has the folder refresh problem been fixed? If not, what should I put in
here about it? Having people view their folders as lists, and open and
close the triangle?
--FAQ--
Q: Where can I get more information on Netatalk?
A: The current location of the actively developed netatalk project can be
found on SourceForge, at: http:/www.sourceforge.net/projects/netatalk.
There are (at least) two very active e-mail lists to which you can
subscribe, the first, netatalk-admins, is for usage and basic
setup/compile questions. It is NOT maintained at sourceforge, but rather
at the University of Michigan, which was involved with a good deal of the
early development.
Subscribe by sending an e-mail to netatalk-admins-request@umich.edu with a
subject of "subscribe" and a blank body. This can be very high volume, but
usually a few messages a day.
The archive is available at:
ftp://terminator.rs.itd.umich.edu/unix/netatalk/ and is called
netatalk-admins.mail. This is a ~6M mbox file. Previous archives are
available there as well.
Netatalk-devel list is more specific to coding and testing. It can be
browsed at: http://www.geocrawler.com/redir-sf.php3?list=netatalk-devel,
and subscribed to at:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/netatalk-devel This varies in
volume, but is usually moderately active.
netatalk-docs is specific to documentation. It can be browsed at:
http://www.geocrawler.com/redir-sf.php3?list=netatalk-docs
and subscribed to at:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/netatalk-docs
As far as I can tell, this list is completely dead.
There are older netatlk information sites at:
http://www.umich.edu/~rsug/netatalk/index.html
http://www.anders.com/projects/netatalk/ and many unices have their own
sites and distributions (tarballs, rpm's, packages, etc.)
Q: How do I get the most recent version of Netatalk?
A: Via CVS from Sourceforge.net. This is the actively maintained version
of netatalk, changes are being made constantly, and therefore it is not
suitable for production environments. The netatalk at Sourceforge is in
Beta, so keep that in mind.
To create the CVS tree - from the directory you want to use as your CVS
root, run:
% cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.netatalk.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/netatalk login
hit <enter> at the Password: prompt
% cvs -z3
-d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.netatalk.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/netatalk co
netatalk
this will create a netatalk subdirectory, and check out all of the files.
If you run this same command subsequently, you will update any files which
have changed (on the CVS server) since your last checkout.
Once you've done that, read the INSTALL file in the netatalk/ directory,
plus the CONFIGURE file. You'll need to have some supplementary software
installed, such as gmake. Additional information can be found in docs/.
The main things to know, though, are this: you must run
% ./autogen.sh in the netatalk/ directory first, in order to create your
configure file.
Then run % ./configure --help | more in order to get a
feel for which compile flags are available. Some of these flags are
summarized below.
To learn more about CVS, a good place to start is: http://www.cvshome.org,
or http://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual, or
http://www.cvshome.org/form/form.cgi (this is the FAQ).
Q: Can I get an almost current version of Netatalk without having to learn CVS?
A: Yes. Weekly (or thereabouts) snapshots of the CVS tree should be
posted for the benefit of those that don't want to / can't use CVS. As of
10/3/01, these were being put up at:
ftp://ftp.marcuscom.com/pub/netatalk/nightly
>From the mail archives:
I have started an archive of nightly CVS snap shots that build a tar.gz of
netatalk ready to configure and build. The images can be downloaded from:
ftp://ftp.marcuscom.com/pub/netatalk/nightly
This site only allows active FTP, so the snaps are also available at:
http://www.marcuscom.com/netatalk/nightly
You should be able to treat these images as you would a release. Just
configure as you normally work, then run make (or gmake as the case may
be). There is no need to run autogen.sh on these images. Please let me
know if you have any problems with these images. Thanks. -Joe
Q: What is this I keep seeing about asun?
A: Before netatalk moved to SourceForge, Adrian Sun (asun) had written
some patches to netatalk which helped significantly with it's usability,
especially using appleshareIP. These patches are still provided by many
unix vendors. I believe all of these patches are included in the current
Sourceforge versions.
Q: I'm having Quark Express file locking problems, is there information on that?
A: Yes, see below about the --enable-did= flag. Also, try using the
--flock-locks flag. Enabling this code disabled the new byte locking
feature. With FLOCK locks, the whole file would be locked. With byte
locks, a byte range could be locked without locking the whole file.
Q: I'm getting this error in Quark Express when trying to save a file to
the server: 'Error Type -50'
A: Turn off the document preview feature off in Quark.
Q: Does netatalk work with Mac OSX?
A: Yes, but only the most recent versions, and it's still being finalized.
Versions prior to 1.5Pre7 did NOT work with OS X, although some really
early versions did (netatalk 1.4+asun?).
Q: I'm getting an 'Application for this document not found' error on OS X.
Q: I'm getting an 'Error Type -43' error on OS X.
A: Configure with --with-did=last. More info on this flag is below.
Q: What are the .AppleDouble and .Parent directories which are created in
the netatalk locations?
A: (also mention samba veto files, and the appledouble/MSwindows options
in AppleVolumes.default
The .AppleDouble folders hold the resource fork information for the mac
files, plus other attributes which are not normally stored by Unix. For
this reason, when you want to move files around in your mac volumes, it's
a good idea to do it from the Mac side (as opposed to from the unix side,
or Samba), unless you make absolutely sure you get the .AppleDouble
directories. These directories are often hidden from the Samba side, via
the veto files configuration.
You can also set netatalk to not create an .AppleDouble directory unless
it absolutely needs it, by setting the noadouble setting in
AppleVolumes.default.
Q: Hidden files - what's up with that?
A: If you set the noadouble flag in AppleVolumes.default, you won't see
the .Apple* or .Parent directories on the Mac side. If you use the veto
files option in Samba, they may be hidden from the windows side as well.
Q: How do I get the directories that are created by Netatalk to have the
correct permissions by default?
A: Investigate the SetGid bit on your unix platform. It's a good idea to
set this on your shared directories, and your .AppleDouble directories.
>From the mail archives: "Usually directories designated for use with
AppleShare have the setgid (g+s) bit set. It forces inheritance of
permissions. Without it, the .AppleDouble subdirectory can't be created
since the new folder doesn't necessarily have the same write privileges."
Also: Evi Nemeth's "Unix System Administration Handbook" which is chock
full of useful advice (and one or two pieces of not-so good advice, but
even those are debatable). Here's what it says about setguid (3rd. ed,
chap 5.5, pg. 69):
"The bits with octal values 4000 and 2000 are the setuid and setgid bits.
These bits allow programs to acess files and processes that would
otherwise be off-limits to the users that run them. ... When set on a
directory, the setgid bit causes newly created files within the directory
to take on the group membership of the directory rather than the defualt
group of the user that created the file. This convention makes it easier
to share a directory of files among several users, as long as they all
belong to a common group. Check your system before relying on this
feature, since not all version of UNIX provide it. ... This interpretation
of the setgid bit is unrelated to it's meaning when set on an executable
file, but there is never any ambiguity as to which meaning is
appropriate." (any typos are mine)
NOTE: The SETUID is usually discussed along with the SetGID bit. The
SetUID bit is VERY dangerous. If you set it on an executable, and the
executable is owned by root, anyone who runs that executable is root for
the duration of that executable's run, so a clever person can leverage
that into a full-scale compromise. The SETGID bit also has implications
that way, so be careful where you set it.
You set it by doing a chmod 2777 or 2775, or whatever. It's that first 2 bit.
Q: How can I set who has access to certain directories?
A: You can certainly do this with your unix permissions, but also explore the
allow/deny/rwlist/rolist options in the AppleVolumes.default file:
# allow/deny/rwlist/rolist format [syntax: allow:user1,@group]:
# user1,@group,user2 -> allows/denies access from listed users/groups
# rwlist/rolist control whether or not the
# volume is ro for those users.
Also, some unices, specically FreeBSD, have other options:
(By Joe Clark)
"What about file and directory permissions? Since I didn't use the FORCE
UID/GID code, I decided to use a feature of FreeBSD called SUIDDIR. From
the LINT kernel config file:
# If you are running a machine just as a fileserver for PC and MAC
# users, using SAMBA or Netatalk, you may consider setting this option
# and keeping all those users' directories on a filesystem that is
# mounted with the suiddir option. This gives new files the same
# ownership as the directory (similar to group). It's a security hole
# if you let these users run programs, so confine it to file-servers
# (but it'll save you lots of headaches in those cases). Root owned
# directories are exempt and X bits are cleared. The suid bit must be
# set on the directory as well; see chmod(1) PC owners can't see/set
# ownerships so they keep getting their toes trodden on. This saves
# you all the support calls as the filesystem it's used on will act as
# they expect: "It's my dir so it must be my file".
FORCE UID/GID code, I decided to use a feature of FreeBSD called
SUIDDIR. From the LINT kernel config file:
# If you are running a machine just as a fileserver for PC and MAC
# users, using SAMBA or Netatalk, you may consider setting this option
# and keeping all those users' directories on a filesystem that is
# mounted with the suiddir option. This gives new files the same
# ownership as the directory (similar to group). It's a security hole
# if you let these users run programs, so confine it to file-servers
# (but it'll save you lots of headaches in those cases). Root owned
# directories are exempt and X bits are cleared. The suid bit must be
# set on the directory as well; see chmod(1) PC owners can't see/set
# ownerships so they keep getting their toes trodden on. This saves
# you all the support calls as the filesystem it's used on will act as
# they expect: "It's my dir so it must be my file".
And the associated mount command:
mount -o suiddir /dev/da2s1e /macvol/artfiles
This was used on my dedicated Netatalk/Samba filesystems. On
filesystems that were also used for interactive shell access, I chmod'd
my Netatalk shares 2770. The reason for this is that I set up a UNIX
group for each department in the ad agency. I had an art group, a media
group, an accounting group, and then, or course, a general staff group.
Each share was only allowed access by the group that needed to access
the share. So, the Artfiles share allowed access only to the art group:
/macvol/artfiles "Art Files" allow:@art
And the others followed in kind. Therefore, the 2770 mask allowed only
owners and people in the associated group access to read and write
files. The leading 2 set the setgid bit so that all child files and
directories would retain the same group permissions. I found this to
work well.
This was used on my dedicated Netatalk/Samba filesystems. On
filesystems that were also used for interactive shell access, I chmod'd
my Netatalk shares 2770. The reason for this is that I set up a UNIX
group for each department in the ad agency. I had an art group, a media
group, an accounting group, and then, or course, a general staff group.
Each share was only allowed access by the group that needed to access
the share. So, the Artfiles share allowed access only to the art group:
/macvol/artfiles "Art Files" allow:@art
And the others followed in kind. Therefore, the 2770 mask allowed only
owners and people in the associated group access to read and write
files. The leading 2 set the setgid bit so that all child files and
directories would retain the same group permissions. I found this to
work well."
Q: I can't seem to use passwords longer than 8 characters for my netatalk
accounts. How can I fix that?
Q: I would like to use encrypted passwords to authenticate to the Netatalk
server. How do I do that?
A: Update to a newer version of AppleShare Client (I think the most recent is 3.8.8). This allows longer passwords, and will allow you to use encrypted passwords. Set which way you would like to authenticate in either afpd.conf or netatalk.conf, depending on your set up.
Q: I'm having massive file deletion problems!
Q: I am having lots of file locking problems!
Q: I'm getting this message in my logs:
WARNING: DID conflict for ... Are these the same file?
A: Compile with the --with-did=last flag set. This activates a different
method of calculating inodes in the software, and will hopefully fix some
of these problems. This code, along with the CNID code, was still being
worked out in Pre7. The cnid/db3 flags also go along with this:
--enable-cnid-db use persistent cnid database per volume (EXPERIMENTAL)
--with-db3=PATH specify path to Berkeley DB3 installation
--with-did=[scheme] set DID scheme (last,mtab)
(For more information on CNID, see the README.cnid file, into which I just
copied wholesale Joe's comments on what he did with cnid and lastdid.)
--with-did=last reverted things back to the old 1.4b2 directory ID
calculation algorithm. This also solved the problem of the syslog
messages and the users complaining of file deletions. It's also been
found that by disabling *BSD's SOFTUPDATES feature on Netatalk volumes (on
FreeBSD), multi-user interaction seemed to work better. This was back in
a late 4.2-BETA, so it's not clear if this still holds true in 4.4-RELEASE
or not.
Q: What does this error mean:
'afpd[#####]: setdirmode: chmod .AppleDouble Operation not permitted'
A: This can be due to a few things.
1) The SetGid bit might not be set on either your directory, or on the
.AppleDouble directory. I think the bit has to be set recursively on the
.AppleDouble folder.
2) You may not be member of the group set on the directory you're trying
to write to.
3) This was a persistant bug in 1.5pre6 for awhile, upgrading might help.
Q: I'm having problems with the Trash folder: either when someone drags
files into it, the system want's them todelete them immeidately, or files
get stuck in there and won't delete.
A: chmod the Network Trash folder to 2775 (/home/public/Network Trash
Folder for instance).
Q: The daemons aren't starting, things aren't showing up in the Chooser,
and I get a message like this in the logs: afpd[####]: Can't register
Tests:AFPServer@*
This is sometimes a result of missing NIC information in the atalkd.conf
file. Put your network interface (something like le0, eth0, fxp0, lo0)
alone on a line in atalkd.conf, and reboot. When atalkd starts, it will
populate the file with a line like: le1 -seed -phase 2 -addr 66.6 -net
66-67 -zone "No Parking"
To find your network interface, run
% ifconfig -a | more
and see which interface has your IP address. Use that one.
(much of this stuff has been pulled out of the mail archives, and from
informational files sent by Joe Clark.)
- -
Karen Swanberg | Sys Admin | Dept. of Geology and Geophysics
206 Pillsbury Hall | 310 Pillsbury Ave. SE | University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455 (612) 624-6541 (612) 625-3819 (f)
* <---- Tribble . <--- Tribble.tgz
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