[TriLUG] apple file sharing protocol

[Aaron S. Joyner]

You do say that your machines are using OS X, but I often find in 
educational environments it's not a pure environment, and there may be 
older OS 7-9 machines to support.  If that's the case, you can have a 
look at netatalk's afpd, the Linux AppleTalk Filing Protocol Daemon.  
Apple's native file sharing is handled via AppleTalk, and Rendezvous.  I 
have not setup Rendezvous myself under Linux, but getting it working 
should not be any great hassle (I have a good friend who has done it and 
spoken favorably of it).  I personally have setup afpd myself, and it's 
a breeze.  The museum where my father works is using it to share out a 
single set of directories to a very diverse set of clients - OS 8, 9, 
and X as well as the same structure via Samba to Windows clients, and 
NFS to a linux client or two.  Allows for easy document sharing and 
collaboration amongst all of the users on the network.

Relevant links:
http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/netatalk.html
http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/

Rendezvous is the magic in OS X that allows for automatic discovery of 
network shares and quick and easy network share browsing.  If you want 
to get it working, a quick google search on "rendezvous linux" will net 
all you could want and more.

Aaron S. Joyner


Tanner Lovelace wrote:

> Ralph Blach said the following on 4/9/04 3:12 PM:
>
>> My son has Apples computers at his school and they are using OSX. 
>> Here are my questions.
>>
>> What file sharing protocal does Apple use.
>> Can linux be a file server to a group of apple machines.  If , how?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>
> If they're using OS X, then it's quite easy.  OS X supports not only
> AppleTalk, but also Samba and NFS.  Probably the easiest thing would 
> be to
> just setup samba on a linux box and have the OS X machines connect
> that way.  <Apple>-k from the Finder brings up the network connect
> dialog.  Specify "smb://hostname/path", username and password and you're
> set.
>
> Cheers,
> Tanner
>