Subject: Netatalk on Mac OSX

From: TimY <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 10:04:55 -0700

I saw on an earlier post someone had asked about OSX, and how 
netatalk would not be needed on for OSX.  I think this is the right 
post.

We have several OSX server Ver. 1.2 boxes here where I work.  We have 
been pounding on the NFS client and server portion of the OS.  I 
would like to report to everyone that it is very reliable and stable. 
Not very fast though.

The appleshare version of OSX server Ver 1.2 is pathetic to say the 
least.  First and foremost you must have a HFS partition to share to 
apple clients.  This is not documented in the install portion of OSX. 
This is very inconvenient and a pain.  Since UFS does not support 
resource forks.  So all shares have to be HFS.  This also poses 
another problem.  Backing up a shared volume.  The best way we have 
found to backup the machine is to NFS share the directories and back 
them up using our Lagato software.  Since retrospect does not support 
OSX yet, that is not an option.  I have been told that the Mac 
retrospect has problems with a lot of files and resource forks.  We 
have run into this problem here as well and are waiting for a fix 
from them.

The interface to control applesharing is through a web browser.  This 
is a huge problem for security.  It is also very unreliable.  Crashes 
and hangs on the admin tool happen very often.  It also is not 
compatible with all browsers.

I would personally like to push to see netatalk on OSX.  I would be 
willing to help out where I could.  I have access to several boxes 
for testing if needed.  I would also like to here from other people 
running OSX server.  I would like to know how everyone else it 
tackling the backup problems.  Maybe we just overlooked something. 
Any feedback would be welcome.

One thing to keep in mind (maybe).  Windows does file sharing 
natively just like OSX.  But SAMBA was built anyway, and it works 
great.  I see the same need in the future for netatalk.

Tim Yardley

---

From: Matthew Keller <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 13:29:58 -0400

TimY wrote:

> We have been pounding on the NFS client and server portion of the OS.  I
	
	NFS, as a rule, is not very fast. Once NFS3 gets adopted widely, and
you start using TCP instead of UDP, THEN you'll see a nice speed jump.

-- 

 Matthew Keller
 WebMaster & Lead Programmer/Analyst
 Distributed Computing/Telemedia
 Information Services Division
 State University of New York at Potsdam
 
 Website: http://mattwork.potsdam.edu/
 PGP: http://mattwork.potsdam.edu/crypto/
 Webcam:  http://webcam.mattwork.potsdam.edu:85/

---

From: Aaron Levitt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 10:54:17 -0700

One side note, I have seen on the amanda mailing list that amanda has been successfully compiled and put into use for backing up *nix as well as OSX itself on an OSX server.  Granted, it won't back up macs, but it will back up your server.  I have yet to see a true cross platform solution that will do *nix, windoze and mac.  We are currently using Amanda for our UNIX/linux machines and retrospect for Mac and win machines.  Both are great for what they are designed for (not to mention amanda is open source!).

Just my $.02.

-Aaron

At 10:04 AM -0700 9/7/2000, TimY is rumored to have said:

> The appleshare version of OSX server Ver 1.2 is pathetic to say the least.  First and foremost you must have a HFS partition to share to apple clients.  This is not documented in the install portion of OSX. This is very inconvenient and a pain.  Since UFS does not support resource forks.  So all shares have to be HFS.  This also poses another problem.  Backing up a shared volume.  The best way we have found to backup the machine is to NFS share the directories and back them up using our Lagato software.  Since retrospect does not support OSX yet, that is not an option.  I have been told that the Mac retrospect has problems with a lot of files and resource forks.  We have run into this problem here as well and are waiting for a fix from them.

>>>>====--------====<<<<>>>>====--------====<<<<
Aaron Levitt		1616 Franklin Street
Systems Administrator	Oakland, CA  94612
Navis LLC		Tel:  510-763-5715
http://www.navis.com	Fax:  510-763-2516
>>>>====--------====<<<<>>>>====--------====<<<<

---

From: Matthew Keller <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 14:13:49 -0400

Aaron Levitt wrote:
> I have yet to see a true cross platform solution that will do *nix, 
> windoze and mac.  We are currently using Amanda for our UNIX/linux
>  machines and retrospect for Mac and win machines.  Both are great 
> for what they are designed for (not to mention amanda is open source!).

	We use Backup Exec by Veritas with great joy. They have clients for
most every platform. I would rather use an open source product, but they
don't exist at the scale we back up data (not to mention support for our
multi-Terrabyte tape carosuel doesn't exist outside of the pay-ware
world).

-- 

 Matthew Keller

---

From: Matthew Geier <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2000 08:30:52 +1100

Aaron Levitt wrote:
> 
> One side note, I have seen on the amanda mailing list that amanda has been successfully compiled and put into use for backing up *nix as well as OSX itself on an OSX server.  Granted, it won't back up macs, but it will back up your server.  I have yet to see a true cross platform solution that will do *nix, windoze and mac. 

 Legato networker. Windows, Novell, a number of Unixen and MacOS.
 The MacOS client sucks. Badly, but it works, just....
 There is no Linux networker client for PPC. Intel, Alpha, MIPS, but no
PPC (or Sparc I think)

 I gather a certain Cobolt Mico is responsible for Networker
Linux/MIPS... 

-- 
Matthew Geier			[email-masked]
Arts IT Unit			+61 2 9351 4713
Sydney University

---

From: Harry Zink/Netatalk List <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 23:15:22 -0700

on 9/7/00 10:04 AM, TimY at [email-masked] wrote:

> I would like to know how everyone else it
> tackling the backup problems.

OS/X's inability to support proper Backup solutions has made me reject it at
every opportunity, and settle for ASIP servers instead. So far, I have not
found an acceptable solution to this issue - and Apple hasn't provided any
either

Harry
-- 
CAN'T SEE MAC IN CHOOSER UNDER RedHat 6.2: If you get errors starting
AppleTalk under RedHat 6.2 and Mandrake 7.1, you need to manually add "alias
net-pf-5 appletalk" to your /etc/conf.modules file.

---

From: Aaron Faby <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2000 08:58:05 -0700

I used to admin an entire OS X Server environment, and I came up with
a simple backup solution. 

You will need one Mac OS machine running Retrospect. On one of your OS
X boxes you will need an HFS partition that can be shared. Write a shell
script that will tar.gz all of your important files on each box and
automatically ftp the tar file to the box with the HFS partition and 
place the file on that partition somewhere. Run this script in cron to
execute everynight (or whenever you want). 

Then on the box running retrospect, mount the HFS drive off the OS X
Server
box and tell retrospect to backup that volume. It works well enough for
most operations. You could even take it a step further and encrypt your
data in the process or do whatever else you want to do in the backup
script.

Aaron Faby

---

From: Matthew Keller <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2000 12:16:44 -0400

Aaron Faby wrote:
> You will need one Mac OS machine running Retrospect.

	But this isn't a good heterogenous solution.

-- 

 Matthew Keller

---

From: Harry Zink/Netatalk List <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2000 10:35:35 -0700

> a simple backup solution.

This is one heck of a kludge - Yikes! It might just be easier to simply
mount the OS/X server volumes on a Retrospect Mac, and back them up that way
- still, this ends up making you use TWO machines for a task that one was
able to do well before.

Great for Apple's bottom-line, I'm sure, but unacceptable for productive
work, IMO.

Like I said, with the present state of affairs, ASIP is the best solution.

Harry