Subject: [netatalk-admins] Strange problems with Netatalk (AppleTalk)...

From: Steve Frampton <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 15:47:51 -0500 (EST)

Hello!

I am having a couple of problems with Macintosh file & print sharing with
AppleTalk/Netatalk.  I am running the kernel 2.0.36 on an x86 with plenty
of RAM (128 Mb), plenty of disk (about 3 Gb), using the
netatalk-1.4b2+asun2.1.0-10a.i386.rpm

The first problem occurs when I attempt to restart the Netatalk package.
Netatalk always starts successfully the first time, when the server is
booted.  However, if I type '/etc/rc.d/init.d/atalk stop', followed by
'/etc/rc.d/init.d/atalk start' (or just do a 'restart'), I get the
following messages:

Starting AppleTalk services: (backgrounded)
[root@bowser frampton]# AppleTalk not up! Child exited with 1.
[root@bowser frampton]# nbp_rgstr: Connection timed out
Can't register bowser.flarc.edu.on.ca:Workstation@*
[root@bowser frampton]# nbp_rgstr: Connection timed out
Can't register bowser.flarc.edu.on.ca:netatalk@*

AppleTalk not up?  Huh??

In order to get AppleTalk running again, I have to reboot the server.

I don't know if this is relevant, but here is my /proc/appletalk:

   Type local_addr  remote_addr tx_queue rx_queue st uid

and my /proc/atalk_iface:

   Interface         Address   Networks   Status
   eth0             005A:81  005A-005A  0
   lo               0000:00  0000-0000  0

and my /proc/atalk_route:

   Target        Router  Flags Dev
   005A:00     005A:81  1     eth0
   0000:00     0000:00  5     lo

I've got AppleTalk compiled into a custom kernel -- tried it first as
a module, but in an attempt to resolve this problem I compiled support
directly into the kernel -- no change.  :-(

The second problem I am seeing is when the "At Ease" software on the Mac
reads the setup information from the server to a local Mac (this happens
upon boot up).  Sometimes this seems to work flawlessly, and other times
the Mac seems to hang for indeterminant periods of time before it either
succeeds or the angry site administrator reboots the Mac.  This seems to
happen when there is more than one user accessing the shares at a given
time.  (The site administrator is laughing at my multi-user Linux system
for not allowing concurrent access!)  Could this be caused by some sort of
locking issue with the Users.dat/Users.idx file?  Or a problem with the
Netatalk package itself? 

I really need to get this working.  The IT manager is looking into other
solutions.  Thankfully NT has more than proven itself in other locations
as not being up to the task.  :-)  However, proprietary solutions such as
Solaris and 'Taz' are being suggested.  ;-(

Anybody have any idea what the problems are?  Any advice would be greatly
appreciated. 

P.S. I notice the most recent netatalk RPM's are 1.4b2+asun2.1.2-2.
Anything new/changed in these that have addressed the problems I
mentioned?  Also, would upgrading my kernel to 2.2.1 likely improve
Appletalk support?

--------------< LINUX: The choice of a GNU generation. >--------------
Steve Frampton  <[email-masked]>  http://qlink.queensu.ca/~3srf

---

From: Palle Girgensohn <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 1999 23:09:41 +0100

Well, the first problem is documented in the man page for atalkd(8):

...

BUGS
       On some systems, atalkd can not be restarted.

...

Sorry... but you should hardly have any reason to restart atalkd.
Possibly papd or aftpd, and they can be restarted.

Unfortunatley, I have no help for your second question. It sounds like a
locking problem, as you say.

/Palle

---

From: Steve Frampton <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 12:09:48 -0400 (EDT)

Hello:

I am running netatalk-1.4b2+asun2.1.3-4 on a Red Hat 5.2 system (kernel
level 2.2.4).

I posted a message back in February [entitled, "Strange problems with
Netatalk (AppleTalk)..."] describing some problems I have been having with
getting Netatalk working with "At Ease".  Although I did receive lots of
helpful advice, I wasn't able to resolve the problem, and went on to other
things.

I went back to look at the problems again today, and believe I can
describe the problems in greater detail than I could before.  Basically,
there *appears* to be two big problems with Netatalk that is preventing me
from getting this to work:

  - No support for symbolic links
  - File contention when more than 1 machine tries to access file(s)
    while logged in as the same user name.

Basically, At Ease stores user data, documents, etc. under one user
account (I've called this "admin").  It is then possible to have the Macs
load this information directly from the server.  If I turn on a Mac, this
works fantastic!

The problem occurs when more than one Mac tries to access the server data
at one time.  They hang there, completing one information request at a
time (for 20 macs, there can be *LOOOOONG* waits!).  Worse yet, this
process may even deadlock, which means sometimes one or more Mac may hang
completely.

I wanted to see if I could resolve this problem, so as a test, I took two
Macs and created a 2nd user called "admin2".  I then copied everything
from /home/admin to /home/admin2, set ownership, and then configured the
2nd Mac to load At Ease information from the 2nd user.

Guess what!?  No more contention!  (As expected).

Okay, so then I thought I could simply create one account per Mac, and
then somehow point their At Ease data to the original "admin" files
(obviously I don't have the space to store 20x the setup files, not to
mention the problems of users having different "Documents" folders on each
Mac!).  I tried this in two ways:

- Point admin2's home directory to /home/admin, set permissions 
  on /home/admin and everything below to 'g+rwx', and put 'admin2' in the
  /etc/group file as part of admin's group.

(that didn't work)

- Point admin2's home directory *back* to /home/admin2, and this time set
symlinks from "/home/admin/At Ease Items", "/home/admin/Documents", etc.
to equivalent names in /home/admin2.  Set ownership to admin2.

That *also* doesn't work.

Therefore, it would appear that in order for my problems to be resolved,
one or both symlink support as well as allowing concurrent file access
from different machines logged on as the same user, will need to be added
to Netatalk.

---

From: "Alex Yu" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 20:07:26 -0400

>   - No support for symbolic links

you are totally wrong.  it works very very very very very very very very
very well.

Alex

---

From: Steve Frampton <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 23:36:18 -0400 (EDT)

> you are totally wrong.  it works very very very very very very very very

Thanks for your very helpful response.  :p

Please note that I said it *appears* that Netatalk has these problems.
I was not saying it *did* have these problems.

According to a sun, however, it appears that the problem is with the
locking code which should be improved in the next version, and that
symlink support could be improved as well.