Subject: AFS and Macintoshes

From: [email-masked] (Patrick J. LoPresti)
Date: 17 Dec 2000 20:25:59 -0500

We are considering deploying AFS at our organization.  In addition to
Linux, Solaris, and Windows clients, we have to worry about Macs;
specifically, MacOS 8.5, 9, and (soon) X.

We can probably wait for the native OpenAFS client for OS X to
stabilize.  But we need to support 8.5 and 9 right away.

I have searched the info-afs and netatalk-admins archives.  I have
browsed the UMich RSUG pages.  I have stumbled onto AuthMan and the
AuthMan UAM:

  http://www.umich.edu/~rsug/authman/

...but some messages from the netatalk-admins archive suggest that
this version of AuthMan may not work with OS 8.5 and higher.

But then, I see a link to a slightly different version of the tools at
this URL:

  http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/mackerb.html

However, I am not even sure AuthMan/AuthMan UAM are the tools I want.

So my question is this: What is the best way to provide access to AFS
for Macs?  What software do I need, and where should I obtain it?  Is
the 1.5 prerelease of netatalk at http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/
suitable?

What do most organizations with AFS and Macs do?

(Note: In our environment, we do not particularly care about sending
cleartext passwords.  And we do not care about any services except
AFS.  So Kerberos is not a requirement; a version of netatalk which
simply used the cleartext password to get AFS tokens would be fine.)

Thanks in advance for any answers!

 - Pat