Subject: [netatalk-admins] converting a million files

From: Brian Reid <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 99 18:04:08 -0800

Nobody was able to answer my question about how I could disable the
AD magic number check in asun2.1.* so that I could safely copy a million
files from the old server to the new server inside Unix.

So I saw that I had no alternative but to copy them by drag and drop on
the Mac desktop, and let each version of netatalk deal with its own
AppleDouble file issues.

Our school's old server has 5 big SCSI disks of various sizes with 1.03
million files in 4000 user logins. (It is a DECstation 5000/33 running
Ultrix and netatalk 1.4b2. The new server is a fast PC with 2 SCSI
controllers, each controlling 3 8 GB Wide Ultra disks, and running
1.4b2+asun2.1.1.

I found 16 iMacs in one room. MacOS 8.5 has the glorious ability to run
more than one copy operation at a time, so I mounted both old and new
server on each of the 16 iMacs and did 3 simultaneous copies on each
iMac. It pounded the Ethernet something terrible. Is pounding,
actually. I started this running last night around 5pm; it has now been
going for 24 hours and has finished 660,000 of the files and copied 3.3
GB of space. It appears that it will finish about 3pm tomorrow, barring
something awful like a power failure.

Tonight I actually liked the feature by which MacOS will start reading
you an alert box if you don't answer it quickly.

Brian Reid

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From: Netatalk Admin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 09:19:45 -0600 (CST)

I have gotten a few responses about the problems I have had with mounting
Sun Sparcs over nfs and then seeing the whole mounted partion from a Mac
through a netatalk connection.

(Confusing perhaps)

Here is a diagram...

[Happy Little Mac]  -- appleshare --> [bsd] -- nfs --> [sparc]

I can connect to the bsd machine and see the top level of the mounted
sparc filesystem, but once I try to open directories, especially
directories with lots of files in them, it take a long time to display, if
ever.  I am wondering if it has to do with the permissions it has once it
is mounted via nfs.

It has no permission to write, at all.  Not even the root user on the bsd
machine can write to the mounted partition.  So if afpd wants to create an
Appledouble directory, it cannot.  Could this be the root of the problem?

Are Appledouble files absolutely necessary?  I am guessing that they are,
but have not read much about them due to the lack of documentation for
netatalk so far.  (We should all start a documentation project.)

Brennan Stehling - that guy in milwaukee

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From: Netatalk Admin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 09:41:12 -0600 (CST)

I have been running netatalk for some time now on my freebsd workstation
at the office.  Recently I bought my own server and installed netatalk and
got that up and running.

Then I upgraded both copies of netatalk a more current release.  
(Thanks asun!)

So I am going along like I always am, passing files back and forth on my
home mac, and after some time of being idle, the server drops my
connection.  The same thing happens at the office.  One of the mac users
is working off the freebsd/netatalk server and she gets dropped.  We can
re-mount the drive, but will get drop later again anyway.

Is this a time-out or is netatalk bombing out?

Is there a time-out built into netatalk?

As far as I know, users should be able to keep the drive mounted all day
and not loose the connection.

Let me know if you need more info.  This problem sort of baffles me.

brennan stehling - offwhite.net