Linux AppleTalk File Share mounting problems

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2005-08-31 at 18:36 -0700, June Tate wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> I'm crossposting this email simply because it crosses two major
> domains: Linux-based AppleTalk file sharing, and Mac OS X AFP
> automounting. I figure that since both the PLUG and XUsers groups are
> highly-technical skilled people, you'd both be interested in this
> oddball situation. If I'm violating either PLUG or XUsers' list
> guidelines, I apologize in advance, and will never do so again.
> 
> So with that said, here's the situation:
> 
>    - I have a main fileserver called Tank that has several file
>      shares (thedump and music) over AppleTalk via the netatalk
>      daemons. Tank is running Debian testing, kernel 2.6.8-1-686 from
>      the Debian archives. The /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default file
>      contains the following lines:
> 
>         /home/thedump   "The Dump"
>         /home/music     "Music"
> 
>      I'm using the guest UAM to authenticate with at the moment.
> 
>    - I have my main MacOS X machine (called Microcosm -- a Mac Mini
>      running Tiger) with the following automount entries in NetInfo's
>      /mounts directory:
> 
>         tank:/music:
>           name: tank:/music
>           dir: /Network/Servers/
>           opts: (net, url==afp://tank/music)
>           vfstype: url
> 
>         tank:/thedump:
>           name: tank:/thedump
>           dir: /Network/Servers/
>           opts: (net, url==afp://tank/thedump)
>           vfstype: url
> 
>      Microcosm knows Tank via an /etc/hosts entry I placed there long
>      ago, which by all accounts resolves to Tank's IP properly.
> 
> The problem is that, when I press Apple-K in the finder to connect to
> the shares using the afp://tank/thedump or afp://tank/music URLs and
> connecting as a guest, the shares mount beautifully and without
> issue.
> 
> When I try to let automount do the dirty work of mounting these
> things, however, autmount spews out the following system log entries
> and fails to mount:
> 
>      automount[29672]: Can't mount tank:/thedump on /private/Network/Servers/tank/thedump: Invalid argument (22)
>      automount[29672]: Attempt to mount /automount/Servers/tank/thedump returned 22 (Invalid argument)
> 
> Note that there are similar entries for tank:/music. Any ideas what
> I'm doing wrong? I've googled this to the point of going crazy with no
> success, and neither the netatalk and Apple Support websites/lists
> seem to have run into this issue.
> 
> I've even tried changing the URLs to the following:
> 
>      afp://;AUTH=No%20User%20Authent@tank/music
>      afp://;AUTH=No%20User%20Authent@tank/thedump
> 
> But that generates similar results to the previous ones, except
> instead of getting an "Invalid argument" error, I get an
> "Input/Output" error.
> 
> Any ideas, folks? I'm at my wits end at this point.
> (and no, creating web locations or adding those mounts from the Finder
> into the login items for my user is not an acceptable solution)
----
Not gonna solve your problem but relate that I have been having problems
with Tiger resolving dns on afp: type URL's and would suggest that even
though you added the hosts entries, you might find that the ip address
is what is needed. You may recall my gripe yesterday about mail lists
and that was the heart of my gripe - specifically about Tiger - after
installing security updates no longer could reliably mount afp://fqdn
shares - even though dns was working fine for panther, WinXP and Linux
systems.

I am not sure why you are using netatalk and not doing an nfs mount but
I suppose you've got a valid reason.

I'm not convinced that 2.0.3 handles some of the changes Apple made in
Tiger - I think the release pre-dated the Tiger release.

Craig