Subject: Volume mounting at startup with OS9.x

From: Aaron Levitt <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 16:21:17 -0800 (PST)

Greets everyone-

I apologize in advance if this has already been addressed.  Even though I
saw similar problems reported in the list archives, none seemed to have
responses that corrected the problems, and I have been off the list for a
while (and will probably end up being off for a bit longer).

I am using netatalk-1.4b2+asun2.1.4 on my main production redhat 6.2 linux
box with a 2.2.14 kernel.  It has been performing great until recently.  
As more and more of our users upgrade to OS9 we are seeing an increasing
number of people that are having problems having volumes mount at boot
time and via aliases.

Currently, one of our shares can't be selected to be mounted at startup,
when you try to check the box to have it mount at startup, it complains
about "The command could not be completed because it contains items that
are in use."

Also, with the same share, if you try to make an alias of it anywhere on
the mac, it gives the same error as above. 

The other issue is if you create an alias of another paticular share, a
different one will actually be mounted when you try mounting it via the
alias.  It will mount the same different share every time.

We have 18 seperate shares, all shared via netatalk and samba, and these 2
are the only ones with problems and only with OS 9, 9.0.4 and 9.1.  
Everything functions normally with macOS < OS9.  We have looked at all the
config files and even recreated the AppleVolumes.default file thinking it
may have gotten some strange cr's or spaces somewhere, but still have the
same results.  We have also tried dumping the System folder/Servers files
and had no change, and even tried a fresh install of OS9.

Any suggestions would greatly be appreciated.  

-Aaron Levitt

---

From: Walt Reed <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 17:38:09 -0800

>number of people that are having problems having volumes mount at boot
IMHO you really shouldn't use the "mount server at boot time" option 
on a mac, especially on a production machine.  if the server goes 
down, for _any_ reason, including being replaced, you will have an 
office full of macs that may or may not boot, while they frantically 
try to mount what's not there, and a crowd of possibly hostile, and 
definitely confused users.  it can be a real nightmare.  i usually 
try to get my users to use an alias, or apple menu->recent servers. 
the benefits of startup mounting do not outweigh the problems, unless 
your users are comfortable with starting with extensions off and 
trashing the system folder->servers entries when the machine doesn't 
boot, and knowing why they are doing it.  that said...

>about "The command could not be completed because it contains items that
what do your config files look like for this share?  is it different 
in any way from the others?  does this one also share to windows via 
samba?  how about nfs? one of the things that's different about os9 
is that the appletalk (or open transport) changed and became more 
tcp/ip native.  you'll notice that with os9 (via the "shareways" 
extention) you can share files from mac to mac over the internet (not 
that you want to be broadcasting your files all over!) or over 
different networks, and access volumes that are not on your network 
(and therefore not in the chooser) just by typing in the ip, much 
like ftp.  appleshare ip (and of course, netatalk!) were able to 
broadcast like this, but not your regular old mac (without extra 
software).  what this means is that the old localtalk networks have 
been somewhat phased out, and it may be you are running netatalk 
without afpd configured correctly.  what does your afpd file look 
like?  do you bind your server to ip's?  do you bind your shares to 
different ports?  mine looks like this:

machine_name	-address 192.168.1.10

but i think i would add separate ports if i had as many shares as you 
(see below).  i think this problem can be solved by tweaking the 
configs, so if you would share the relevant parts, i think we could 
get somewhere.

>the mac, it gives the same error as above.
yeah, that's a real problem.

>alias.  It will mount the same different share every time.
once again, i need to see the appropriate configs on this, and you 
may want to bind to different ports.

>and had no change, and even tried a fresh install of OS9.
are all 18 on the same machine? have you thought about splitting some 
of these up on to other linux boxes?  it seems a bit excessive, 
unless you are counting the users home directories.

>Any suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

hope that helps,

walt reed