Subject: Re: Identical Twins Causing Trouble

From: "Joe Rhodes" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 21:42:25 -0600

For some strange reason, I keep getting bumped off this list.  Is this a 
feature?  Anyone else have this problem?

I just re-subscribed and saw your post.  I'm reposting what worked for me.  
Let me know if you have any questions.  I'd be happy to help you out.

Cheers!
-Joe Rhodes

--------------------------------------------------------

For the sake of someone searching through the archives for this at a latter
date, here's a synopsis of the problem:
You have two netatalk servers (RedHat Linux Based--Intel or LinuxPPC)
running on the same network.  They have different names, and each show up in
the chooser seperately.  However, when you log into one, the client mac sees
the other as the same server as the first one you logged onto--and vice
versa.

Getting both servers to be recognized as different servers involved getting
them to have unique server signatures.  As was pointed out to me, this is
directly affected by the value returned by the hostid command.  For
instance, my results from hostid were 17f00.  Looking at that, 7f is hex for
127.

As it turns out, the hostid is based off your server name and whatever that
server name has for an address in /etc/hosts.  For instance, in the file
/etc/HOSTNAME my test server is called LittleLinux. In /etc/hosts I MUST
have a line that goes something like this:
192.168.0.1  LittleLinux LittleLinux.localdomain

You can (and probably should, but I don't know, I'm no expert) have the
default line of
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain
in there.  As long as the machine can find a match to what it thinks is the
hostname, it will hash that IP address as the hostid, and consequently, as
the Server Signature.  By testing, I found it makes no difference what order
the lines appear.

If you do not have a line that matches, the machine will use the
"localhost" entry.  I ended up with two servers both hashing 127.0.0.1 as a
hostid.

The number here does not HAVE to be the correct IP address.  (For instance,
on my test machine, I run as a DHCP client, but I just left that 192.168
address there for grins.)  If you do have the correct address there, then it
will be transmitted to your client, and if the client will support it, it
will connect via TCP/IP.  (Unless you specify otherwise in your config
file.)

I need to make sure and give a big THANK YOU to all the people that helped
me figure this one out.  It's really cool how quickly you all responded with
suggestions even though I'm sure you're all pretty busy with your own
problems.

Does anyone know if there is an FAQ-O-Matic that this should go in?  Perhaps
a centrally kept FAQ somewhere?  Or do we just rely on the e-mail archive
searches for this?  (Which is primarily what I've been using.)

Thanks again everyone!

-Joe Rhodes

"Contrary to popular belief, Unix is very user friendly.
It's just very picky about who its friends are."

>From: Dan Horth <[email-masked]>
>To: Basil Hussain <[email-masked]>,        Netatalk List 
><[email-masked]>
>Subject: Re: Identical Twins Causing Trouble
>Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 10:25:11 +1100
>
>Basil - I can't help directly with your problem but can point you in
>the direction of the thread you refer to...
>
>it started on November 1 by Joe Rhodes, with the subject line "Two
>servers appear as one"
>
>the subject line changed a couple of times so if you end up at the
>end of the thread without an answer I'd skip to the next message by
>date...
>
>HTH - dan.
>
>At 4:33 PM +0000 21/11/00, Basil Hussain wrote:
>>Then, I remembered seeing something about this same sort of problem on the
>>mailing list a while back. But, I can't seem to find it in the archive (it
>>really needs a search facility!).
>--
>
>	Nitro - 3D Visualisation, Graphics & Animation
>		Ph (+61 2) 9810 5177 - Fx (+61 2) 9810 0199
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>
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>

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