Subject: [netatalk-admins] netatalk, samba, ...

From: Clemens Schmuck <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 15:38:59 +0100 (MET)

hello,

this is my first post to the list so dont shoot me if this question has
been here before.

i'm just planning a heterogenous network with mac win and unix machines
(all in all about 30 computers). to easen backup tasks and lower the costs
i think about a central fileserver. linux with samba and netatalk should
do that, but as i heard there ar some problems with this solution ??

my question is has anybody had a simmelar problem, and which sollutions do
you suggest?

thanks for any hint.

clemens

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From: Eddie Irvine <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 14:41:03 +1000

> do that, but as i heard there ar some problems with this solution ??

There are two problems, as I understand it:

1) Fred saves a file from his Mac. He then goes to and IBM and deletes
it.
   He then goes back to his mac, and can *see* the icon for that file,
but
   when he tries to open it, he gets a "file not found" error. But, he
can't
   get rid of the icon, either.

2) Fred on a Mac and Mary on a PC have the same filemaker database open.
   In this situation, I don't think record locking works that well.

If you don't plan to do a lot of database work between apps, and you can
educate users to delete files made by a mac, with a mac, then I think it 
works fine.

I have a Mac/Win 95 environment about three times the size and mostly it
seems
OK, and a lot more stable that MacIP 6. I use FreeBSD 3.1 but Linux
should be
OK too (well, almost!).

Eddie.

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From: Netatalk Admin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 17:33:25 -0600 (CST)

I am not sure if the first example is a problem.  I created a BBEdit
document on the unix system (freebsd3) and unmounted the server.

Then I went to the unix machine locally and deleted the file, leaving the
appledouble files alone.  So this would simulate the same problem as
samba.

Then I went back to the mac to see if it was a problem.  The file did not
even appear.  This is how it should work.  I had no problem.

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From: Palle Girgensohn <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 01:10:19 +0100

Hi!

Get samba >=2.0 and run configure  with --with-netatalk (on FreeBSD,
edit the port's Makefile and add one more row of CONFIGURE_ARGS), and
you won't have the first problem. With this configure switch, samba
deletes any .AppleDouble resource fork file together with the data fork
file if there is one. Ain't life sweet! :-)

Filelocking... I'm not sure. There are probably some interoperability
problems. Actually, I think that netatalk and samba both have their own
locking systems, but I may be wrong here.

/Palle

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From: Michael Bartosh <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 18:36:22 -0600

This is a little off topic.

I have a hub in my room connected to my campus LAN. I am aware that 
this could cause problems with topology, but I was under the 
impression that those problems went away when you started using a 
switched hub (which I htink ours is)

Anyway- After I've had this setup about 3 mos, all of the sudden 
people on my hub can not see other local atalk machines- they don't 
show up in the chooser.

I was wondering if my linux box doing netatalk and/or my hub might be 
causing this problem? I took the hub off and the problem remains.

npblkup seed all the machines in the zone- altho the chooser in Caper 
on my NeXT Slab does not see local machines ether, nor do any of the 
other Macs.

-mab

*******
Michael Bartosh
[email-masked]
cell: 409/537.2129
Texas A&M University
http://jungfrau.tamu.edu/~bartosh

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher
regard those who think alike than those who think differently."

- -- Nietzsche
			Think Different.
			    Apple.

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From: Jim Zajkowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 20:27:10 -0500 (EST)

} 2) Fred on a Mac and Mary on a PC have the same filemaker database open.
}    In this situation, I don't think record locking works that well.

I think "it depends," based on how FileMaker notes what records are
locked.  The file won't be locked by the host OS since, well, what would
be the point of having a DB that couldn't be shared?

If you're bent on FileMaker, you should consider the FM Server thing.  It
supports record-level locking and handles concurrency better than a
shared-file database.  That goes for Access, too: you should get a real
SQL server instead.

Jim

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From: Casey Bisson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 09:34:35 -0500

This example is exactly how _not_ to do it. FileMaker databases cannot be shared to
multiple users from a file server. To share the database, it absolutely requires a
filemaker database host/server. Any current version of FileMaker (back to 2.1 or below)
supports database hosting.

Typically, when accessing a database from a file server, the first computer opens it from
the file server and locks the entire file. The next computer to attempt to access it finds
the lock and looks to the first computer, trying to open it as a client of that machine.
But, from what I can remember of previous threads on the subject, netatalk doesn't support
locking or lock sharing with samba, so this process doesn't work, and you will likely
corrupt the database if you attempt it.

Once again: don't attempt to serve a database from a file server if data integrity is
important!

FileMaker Server, does do database serving faster: it performs finds and sorts on the
server, rather than on the client.

Casey Bisson
Plymouth State College

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From: Eddie Irvine <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 08:55:48 +1000

Yes, yes, I know. I was using filemaker to demonstrate that
record/file locking, never one of the finer points of Unix,
may bring down a file that is being Served by Samba and 
Netatalk *at the same time*.

I should have made it clear that we use filemaker 3.0 server,
and have done since not long after it was brought out.

Thanks for the info on the --with-netatalk switch, Palle!

Casey Bisson wrote:
> 
> This example is exactly how _not_ to do it.