Subject: [netatalk-admins] getting appleshare

From: Glenn Johnson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 20:51:17 -0500

Greetings,

I recently "inherited" a Macintosh Performa 550. I decided to network this 
with a FreeBSD machine using netatalk and IP aliasing for Internet. 
Apparently, all of the networking extensions were removed from the Mac and I 
do not have a system CD to replace them. Can someone tell me what my best 
course of action should be? I do not want to spend a lot of money on this 
computer so I am looking for an alternative to upgrading the OS, which 
currently is System 7.1P6.

All pointers are greatly appreciated and thanks in advance.
-- 
Glenn Johnson
[email-masked]

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From: Jesse Reynolds <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 12:55:46 +1030

Hi there

does anyone use Retrospect on a Mac to backup their unix machine via
appleshare?  Have you run into any problems - does it work well?

What I'm planning to do is mount my unix machine at root level read only
and backup the whole thing in one go once a day. However, it seems a
difficult thing to create a user that has access to read everything on the
server without write permission everywhere as well.... any ideas how i'd do
that?

(Solaris 2.5.1, asun netatalk)

cheers

jesse

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From: Mike Holling <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 22:04:58 -0400 (EDT)

> currently is System 7.1P6.

OS upgrades are free from Apple's ftp server.  Not sure if 7.1P6 can be
upgraded, but if it can, you'll need to upgrade to 7.5.3 and from there to
7.5.5.  7.5.3 has some weird name, like 7.5 update 2.

- Mike

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From: Peter Gutowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 06:07:44 -0400 (EDT)

> appleshare?  Have you run into any problems - does it work well?

Yes, I backup two whole volumes (6gb & 9gb) nightly and it seems to work
just fine.(The backup computer has the volumes mounted and backs them up as
"local" drives.) I've had to restore some files occasionally too, and that
works too, though not to the server, so I have confidence in the process.

> server without write permission everywhere as well.... any ideas how i'd do

I would suggest not creating a share of the root directory. First, it will
propagate '.AppleDouble' directories in every current directory, and
Second, probably most of the data on the rest of the host computer doesn't
change that much and should be backed up by hooking the backup device
directy to your server and backing up directly. (Also, keep in mind the
worst case scenario of having to restore your system from this backup, so
keep boot floppies/CDs with any needed software handy. Test it out too!)

Peter Gutowski
email: [email-masked]
http://www.powervue.com/~peterg

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From: Adrian Howard <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 11:48:54 +0100

>(Solaris 2.5.1, asun netatalk)

This can work well in some instances (for example when you are backing up
directories/partitions which are just used by atalk users). However, if you
are planning to back up UNIX files three problems you are going to have to
consider:

1) Many UNIXes have longer filenames than the Mac can cope with
2) You lose the file permissions and user/group IDs
3) Dealing with "special" characters (/, ., :, etc.) on Macs/Unix can be a
   pain...

(it's also trez slow unless you're using atalk via TCP/IP.... but everybody
is these days :-)

As an alternative to directly mounting a directory we tar & gzip important
directories from the UNIX boxes into a special directory which we than
backup nightly (when our fardling DAT drive is working that is --- roll on
that DLT order :-).

Doing this has the advantages of
	o keeping full/accurate filenames
	o keeping permissions and UIDs
.... disadvantages
	o recover involves UNIX command line stuff (not a major deal for us,
	  but might be for some people)
	o wastes a lot of disk space (again, not a big issue for us)
	o backups not incremental (hence, you waste a lot of tape --- this
is a
	  pain. We backup about 300Meg nightly when it would probably be less
	  than a meg if it was incremental).

A more sensible option would be to use dump (or something similar) to setup
an incremental regime... however we've never had the spare time to sort
this out...

Another possibility, which I have not looked into at all, is the new backup
via FTP which the new Retrospect has. I don't know off the top of my head
if it allows FTP as a source as well as a target --- but it may offer
another route.

Now.... if only Retrospect would do a Linux backup client I would be trez
happy :-)

I would be intrested if anybody else has alternate solutions.

Cheers,

Adrian