Netatalk SD Card Image?

[Byte Knight]

Does anyone have a ready-to-use SD card image of Netatalk for the RPi that works with OS 7.5-9.2?  I have not had any luck getting it set up properly...

Thanks in advance.

 

[Von]

Have a look here:





While I don't have a RPi or SD image, I do have netatalk running on Lubuntu and all of my macs running OS 6-9 can connect to it.

 

[Cory5412]

Worth looking at A2Server - it's designed for explicitly this task, just, with AppleTalk-equipped Apple IIe/c and IIgs computers in mind.

What are you looking to do in particular? VTools may be another option if you have ethernet and 7.5+ with all the relevant opentransport and appleshare updates.

I do have netatalk running on Lubuntu and all of my macs running OS 6-9 can connect to it.

Which version, of both Ubuntu/Lubuntu and Netatalk?

Around ten years ago, you could "apt-get install netatalk" on a debian system and it would work pretty much out of the box, but I don't believe Netatalk 3 supports all the same stuff Netatalk 2 did.

 

[Byte Knight]

Thanks for the info.  I've got a RPi running TCP'ser to emulate a Hayes modem for my BBS, and I figured that it could also be used as a backup server for my old Macs, and possibly link to it for the Mac download section of the BBS in the future.

The applefool site looks quite daunting - that's why I was hoping somebody had a prebuilt image...

I've tried to get A2Server up and running but get the "Apple II clients cannot connect because Appletalk networking is unavailable..." message.  I'm using Raspbian and it's supposed to automatically install Appletalk for you, but this does not appear to be the case.

I already have an account on VTools, but I was looking to set up something more local.

 

[Von]

Which version, of both Ubuntu/Lubuntu and Netatalk?

Around ten years ago, you could "apt-get install netatalk" on a debian system and it would work pretty much out of the box, but I don't believe Netatalk 3 supports all the same stuff Netatalk 2 did.

Lubuntu 17.10

I started with this and have not updated it as I don't want anything to break

Netatalk 2.2.6

You are correct, Netatalk 3.0 dropped support for old Macs so I went with the last 2.x available.  Running this didn't work with OS X so I added Samba.

Samba 2:4.6.7 -- not sure if that is visible in the screen below.

Very open Samba settings pointing to the same folder allows OS X and Windows, DOS, OS/2, BeOS as well as Mac OS 6-9 to access and share files.  Very helpful in moving stuff around.

Below show it running as VMware Fusion VM. I also have this same setup on an old IBM X31 laptop.

I have been meaning to build a version of this VM to share here but there has been no time...

 

[NJRoadfan]

A2Server works fine with classic MacOS machines as well since the Apple IIgs and IIe Appletalk stacks are from the same era (AppleShare 3.0), A2Server also includes Samba so Windows machines can access the shares as well.

 

[lisa2]

I can vouch for using A2server, as NJRoadfan said it is not just for Apple 2's and is a great solution for connecting older Macs.

You may also want to look at MaciPpi.  It is another great pre-configured Netatalk solution.  

 

[Byte Knight]

I was able to get A2Server up and running!  My issue was trying to get it working via wifi - ethernet works perfectly.

 

[Byte Knight]

If anyone is interested in signing on to my Pi server with your old Mac, log on to my BBS for instructions (click on link in my signature).  I've only got B&W Mac games up on there now but will be adding much more in the near future...

 

[pcamen]

I'm playing around with a2server now.  I have it running as a virtualbox VM at the moment and can see it from my Mojave Mac and a 9.2.2 Mac (so far). 

http://ivanx.com/a2server/a2server_virtualbox.html

I created a separate Mac share as follows:  

In /etc/netatalk, edited AppleVolumes.default and added:

/media/A2SHARED/MAC MAC ea:ad

You can either restart the VM / appliance for it to take effect or execute:

netatalk-stop

netatalk-start




One quirk I ran into is that once you start copying things to the partition with resource forks, it creates some directories to store them, but the permissions are wrong.  Here is how I fixed them:

The .AppleDouble and .AppleDesktop files did not have the correct user and group, probably created when I first tried to copy something with a resource fork.  Changing them to the default user "user1" and to 777 permissions fixed the problem.   For good measure I applied those permissions to everything in /media/A2SHARED.  Yea, it is pretty permissive, but this is on a home network, so I am not worried. 

And FYI, when you log into AppleShare, you use the same default user / pass as you do for the VM: user1 / apple2. 

I also expanded the main partition to be larger to allow for more storage.  Here are the instructions I fallowed:

https://linuxhint.com/increase-virtualbox-disk-size/

I think I am likely going to opt to go with a VM vs running it on a Raspberry Pi.  I have a pretty beefy 2019 Mac Mini to run it on with plenty of memory and RAID storage that is automatically backed up via time machine.  And I think performance will likely be better than on a Raspberry Pi.  And I already have it working on a VM.

 

[pcamen]

Another tip - if you want to change the name of the AppleTalk share, change the system hostname, in /etc/hostname. 

 

[pcamen]

Another tip.  Under 9.2.2 on my Lombard, it would not browse to the a2server in the Chooser, so I had to connect via IP address.  So I gave the VM a static IP address.  This involved editing /etc/network/interfaces (via sudo) and changing this:

iface eth0 inet dhcp


to something like this:

iface eth0 inet static
address 192.0.2.7/24
gateway 192.0.2.254


and rebooting the VM.  Now it works like a champ. 

 

[pcamen]

Okay, I ran into a bit of a problem.  With the new "Mac" share I created, I can no longer write to it, at least from Mojave. 



I checked and double checked all the permissions and everything is wide open.

I can write just fine to the out-of-the-box GSFILES share.  For kicks, I swapped the folder names between GSFILES and MAC and that made no difference, which tells me that this isn't an issue with the file system permissions. 

I've looked and looked through everything that seems associated with netatalk:

/etc/netatalk/

/usr/local/etc/netatalk/

/media/A2FILES/

There are very few places where the GSFILES name appears, making it seem unlikely that I simply missed a configuration for GSFILES that I should have copied for the MAC share. 

I also tried this from two different Mojave machines with no luck on either. 

Anyone come across this issue?

 

[pcamen]

Ok, well, never mind the Bollocks on that one.  Turns it it was a file system permissions issue.  When I copied the GSFILES directory structure to the Mac share name, while preserving permissions, that fixed the problem. 

sudo cp -rp GSFILES/ MACFILES

 

[LaPorta]

Been reading and trying to get this working well. I have a few questions:

1. - Is there any way for the virtual machine to use my RAID drive attached to my Mac Mini (the host machine) as the directory hosted over Netatalk? Possibly map the drive as a virtual drive on the virtual machine or something?

2. - It looks like you found a way to set a static IP; I will try that out. Have you been able to connect to this from System 6 all the way up through OS X?

 

[pcamen]

1. - Is there any way for the virtual machine to use my RAID drive attached to my Mac Mini (the host machine) as the directory hosted over Netatalk? Possibly map the drive as a virtual drive on the virtual machine or something?

I don't see why not.  You just have to point Netatalk to the proper path, wherever it is in the file system. 

2. - It looks like you found a way to set a static IP; I will try that out. Have you been able to connect to this from System 6 all the way up through OS X?

I haven't tried System 6, but if it works System 7 I don't see why it wouldn't work for 6.  And it definitely works for Mojave and Catalina too. 

I was having major problems last week and thought something had blown up, and then realized, in my zeal to clean up my IP range and create more DHCP addresses, I put another device on the same IP as the a2server, my Time Capsule. 

 

[LaPorta]

I am uncertain where it would be in the file system. I think that I may have to somehow link it through the virtual box application itself first to be "seen" as a drive. I'll let you know how it goes. This thing is so cool!

 

[LaPorta]

Ok, so I mapped a shared folder in the Virtual Box settings. Where are the drives accessed via the command line? There's no "volumes" folder like in OS X.

 

[davidg5678]

I can confirm that System 6 works fine with A2Server as I have been using it for the last few days.