Linux AppleTalk File Share mounting problems

[June Tate]

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)
-- 
June Tate * http://www.theonelab.com * june at theonelab.com
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