AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

There is a way to re-enable the old DHCAST128 support in Lion. This has worked for me in both DP3 and DP4. I claim no credit, I merely found the information here:

http://www.alexanderwilde.com/2011/04/o ... orkaround/

Essentially it involves changing a couple of hidden defaults as follows:

To turn on “DHCAST128″ support please do the following:

1) Launch /Applications/Utilities/Terminal and do:
sudo chmod o+w /Library/Preferences
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleShareClient afp_host_prefs_version -int 1
Now restart your computer.

2) From Finder, select an AFP server, or use “Connect To…”. This will cause the AFP Client to create the full preferences file

3) Launch Terminal again and do:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleShareClient afp_disabled_uams -array “Cleartxt Passwrd” “MS2.0″ “2-Way Randnum exchange”
sudo chmod o-w /Library/Preferences
Now restart your computer.

Note: To add a “DHCAST128″ to the disable list, use
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.AppleShareClient afp_disabled_uams -array-add “DHCAST128″

I hope this is helpful. I don't have LionAFPd_2.1.3-rns-0.1.2.bin installed. I imagine Apple would regard this workaround as insecure.

Nice tip phaedrus! Sounds like a good temporary solution for Sparc users who are early adopters of Lion.

Some good news is that it seems Netatalk 2.2.0 has now been released! See http://www.netafp.com/downloads/

So I hope this makes it into the 4.2.18 public beta for x86 devices. I guess we'll have to wait and see what NetGear decides to do.

A version is planned for the DUO ?

Im very new to these forums so hi. Im running the latest build of lion dev on my imac, and made the error of not checking full compatibility before installing. My problem is that all my itunes media and plex 1080p content is stored on the readynas NV+. Iv found that movies of 720p and above wont play smoothly (Cifs) due to the poor speeds i am experiencing. I have done all the above which allows me to connect as a guest only to AFP but not as a user. This is not allowing to point itunes through AFP and when i do it just hangs. Iv managed to use plex as a guest connection and from a 30 min 1080p movie clip it played fine. What im looking for is a solution to get this readynas NV+ to play nice with itunes and lion or im gonna have to sell. Im quite a novice when it comes to this but am competent enough to follow any instructions you guys can help me with. Please help, all i want is to get all this to work as i imagined and not feel like i have spend a load of money and getting no results.

Welcome

Lion is an OS in beta. NetGear doesn't support betas of 3rd party OSes/software. One can expect that a major OS upgrade is quite likely to break things, so it's best not to upgrade straight away. If the Terminal hack didn't fix things for you then I guess you'd be best to wait and see if an update with DHX2 is added at some point.

You could perhaps try accessing the shares over NFS and see if the performance is fine using that.

Sure, OSX Lion is in Beta. Due to be released in July. So, six weeks from now, Netgear can no longer claim compatibility with AFP in general and TimeMachine specifically. It might be a wise thing to postpone upgrading to OSX Lion, but people who buy new macs do not have that option. Time for an afp update, Netgear!

One thing AFP will work with guest access and Mac os X 10.7. But if you will need to run the shell commands listed above to get authentication working.

The reason is due to 10.7 disabling support for DHCAST123 which Apple engineers believe to be insufficiently secure. Thankfully though it is possible to enable DHCAST128. Though TimeMachine still won't work.

As mentioned before, to get TimeMachine working, AFP 3.3 would need to be supported via the newer version of Netatalk.

NetGear can continue to claim compatibility with AFP and Time Machine. Lion has not been released yet and even after it's released next month, the ReadyNAS will remain compatible with with Mac OS X Leopard and Mac OS X Snow Leopard which for quite some time the vast majority of Mac users will still be using.

Sensible users who want to keep compatibility with their software and hardware will wait for software updates for their software and firmware updates for things like NAS units before updating to a major new OS. Then there'll also be the need for minor updates to Lion itself to iron out some remaining bugs. It'll still be some months from now before a user genuinely relying on their Mac for business work would want to upgrade (unless they work in IT) to Lion.

AFP should already be working with x86 ReadyNAS (NVX, Ultra, Pro) and Lion, but not with the Sparc ReadyNAS. Time Machine will require an update to Netatalk 2.2 for all ReadyNAS.

When you compare the version of Netatalk on ReadyNAS units with the versions on other NAS units, you can see that most of the competition is running terribly old versions of Netatalk.

I'm sure NetGear is well aware of the need for updated Netatalk. In particular, the Jedi chirpa, has lots of Apple products: http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=46836

I currently do all my TimeMachine backups via a drive attached to my Mac Mini (running mac os x 10.6.7 server.) So the issue with AFP on my ReadyNAS isn't a big issue, and authentication issues can be resolved by the shell commands that were listed earlier.

As I'm quite new to the ReadyNAS DUO (I bought it last night after some cursory investigation) to be honest I am quite happy with the device (Just copying over a lot of data right now.)

I might see if I can find a version of Debian Sarge for Sparc (I've got a couple of old sun boxes here.) And see if I can get a newer version of Netatalk happening. I just need to learn a little more about the hardware on the duo, it might be possible, might not be depending on the dependancies.

Lots of fun indeed.

~ivy

If you're not using Time Machine then simply enabling DHX2 e.g. using WhoCares? add-on earlier would be all you need. Though his add-on does have a lot of debug code in it.