Subject: [netatalk-admins] Questions *and* Kudos to the NetAtalk authors (and Adrian Sun) for 1.4b2+preasun-2.1

From: PayPC System Mail Subscriber <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 04:57:08 +1000

[Linux 2.0.33+, libc5, Slack distro with MANY upgraded servers and stuff, 
AMD-K6/200 SCSI, 3Com 3c590TX netcard, module Appletalk support, etc] Clients 
are nearly all 8.x with one 7.5.3 holdout. :)

As a bleeding edge beta user, I must say that compared to CAP, this software 
was trivial to compile, trivial to configure, and runs reliably and very 
quickly.

While on the same net and to/from the same server, I don't get the same 
performance from a 120Mhz 604 PowerMac (OT 1.3) as I do from my WinNT4 
clients via samba, I suspect this has more to do with the clients than the 
server software.  And it CERTAINLY kicks DAVE 2's butt in every way 
(reliability and speed namely).

Samba lets me work-around the .AppleDouble/NetworkTrash/etc "problems" 
through its veto mechanisms... my windows clients never see those files ever.

Now... I have a few questions... since I've been running this for just a few 
days now... I've noticed a variety of things and strange behaviours.

1) Network Trash Folder issues. (I have a work-around that seems stable 
"longterm")

When more than one user has a certain volume mounted, the 2nd, 3rd, etc users 
can't store things in the net trash directory.  (User gets "Must be 
immediately thrown in the trash" dialogue).

My workaround is to create a directory for each user in Network Trash Folder 
(owned by each user, named like the ones the finder uses, numbered 
consecutively), with the Net trash folder write-locked.

2) The only mounts that get the Extended Bytes command code "Get Info" calls 
( >4GB sizes) are ones mounted by the OWNER of EVERY mountpoint directory 
available.  Even if the directory is fully write-permitted to the groups who 
have access, no dice.  Right now, I have only one user (aside from root) who 
fits that bill... the "nfsadmin" which is the file server maintenance 
account.  Even though users own their own "home" directories, since they also 
don't own all of the rest of the shares, for some reason, the finder never 
asks for (or uses) the extended size information.  (It displays the volume 
size as that phony 1.9GB, rather than the 3.6GB the nfsadmin sees).

This is mostly cosmetic -- and since I employ quotas, 99% of the users don't 
even get CLOSE to that kind of storage anyhow.

But still... it's weird.  But wait... is that the key to my madness?  Quotas? 
 I just re-checked some of my users' quotas --- the largest ones are a shave 
under 2GB.  Only the nfsadmin has no limit.  Is this the reason?  In which 
case, maybe it's just confusion on my part.  I guess from the UNIX 
perspective, your quota limit is your quota limit - the volume might as well 
be only your hard quota limit in size.

3) I'd love to share my webspace as well, except I have some users who I 
can't trust to always "do the right thing" with respect to saving only 
data-fork files there.  It'd make site maintenance much easier.  Is there a 
way to completely disable the .AppleDouble behaviour of a share?  Windows 
users ironically enough can already do this perfectly (hell, they can "surf" 
our sites' pages by browsing the webspace as a directory with the IE4 "shell" 
-- it's indistinguishable from "normal files").

But I don't dare share my webspace to the Macintosh clients, I don't want 
.AppleDoubles and god knows what else littering that area.  What are my 
options?

Thanks again,  the product exceeded my expectations, and it's given "new 
life" to my (mostly macintosh and UNIX) network -- using DAVE was 
frustrating, it was buggy, slow, and I didn't trust on MY systems that I 
personally used.  Being able to use the normal Chooser to mount my UNIX 
servers gave me back a great deal -- I'll be using it for quite some time, I 
suspect.

=Robert=