AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

The ReadyNAS uses the open source project Netatalk to provide AFP. See http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/

Currently in 4.1.7, Netatalk 2.1.3 is used. Hopefully the Netatalk developers will test the developer preview of OS X Lion and update the Netatalk project to use a version of afp compatible with Mac OS X Lion.

Then it'd be up to NetGear to decide whether to do the necessary backporting to support it on the Sparc platform and include it in a future firmware update.

Please bear in mind that NetGear only supports stable OSes, not beta/developer preview versions so tech support won't be able to help you with problems you encounter using it.

If AFP can't be updated to a version supported by Mac OS X Lion then I guess you'd need to use CIFS or NFS instead.

Thanks for the reply. I totally understand the not supporting unreleased OS's. It could technically be that when it is released it will support old versions of AFP. But I figured it was good to share some initial findings.

I think I have had my ReadyNAS for 2 maybe 3 years. To bad, it is looking that it may be unusable for me since I rely on the AFP. Technically I can access files via SMB, but AFP was serving a purpose. Oh well, may I'll just sell it and put some drives in the Mac Pro :/

I think Apple would be encouraging the move to using the newer versions of AFP. It's easier not to support outdated versions of AFP.

I don't know if newer versions of Netatalk are compatible with Mac OS X Lion or not. I'm not part of the Apple developer program so I can't test Mac OS X Lion.

Sparc ReadyNAS (e.g. Duo, NV, NV+) use firmware that has evolved from the original Sparc firmware that shipped on the first Sparc units released over 6 years ago. It has become necessary to backport things such as Netatalk. There is also the CPU to consider, Sparc ReadyNAS use a slow CPU, so the CPU needs of a new version of Netatalk would also need to be considered (I don't know if they've increased or not, but NetGear would find out when they do testing). Newer ReadyNAS (e.g. NVX, Ultra, Pro) use Intel processors and different firmware. These have much faster CPUs and are on the x86 platform. These would be far less likely to have issues with a Netatalk backport and could see a newer version of Netatalk earlier.

If experiences with Snow Leopard are anything to go by, it's best not to be an early adopter of a new Mac OS X major update as it may break functionality on the ReadyNAS. A firmware update with a newer version of Netatalk should help resolve issues and restore broken functionality. Minor OS updates from Apple can also help.

The issue is with authentication as outlined here: http://trick77.com/2011/02/25/afp-broken-linux-based-nas-mac-os-x-lion-10-7/. Netgear has to update to the latest version of netatalk.

Just had a look at the GPL source code (http://www.readynas.com/gpl) for 4.2.15 for x86 ReadyNAS and it includes the necessary dhx2 user authentication module as does the GPL source code for 4.1.7 for Sparc. So I guess the modules are available, it could simply be a matter of NetGear installing them and configuring them properly if they haven't already.

So sounds like the situation may not be as bad as I thought it could be and hopefully it's a relatively easy thing to fix.

Just had a look around and I've determined that the dhx2 user authentication module is installed on x86 ReadyNAS in 4.2.15 but not on Sparc ReadyNAS in 4.1.7. Not sure why NetGear left it out. It could've been for performance reasons due to the slow Sparc CPU and not wanting to introduce additional overhead.

If you want to check for yourself take a look at the following:

Sparc-NAS:~# ls /usr/lib/netatalk
uams_clrtxt.so	uams_dhx_pam.so  uams_dhx_passwd.so  uams_dhx.so  uams_guest.so  uams_pam.so  uams_passwd.so

and

x86-NAS:~# ls /usr/lib/netatalk
uams_clrtxt.so	uams_dhx2_pam.so  uams_dhx2_passwd.so  uams_dhx2.so  uams_dhx_pam.so  uams_dhx_passwd.so  uams_dhx.so  uams_guest.so  uams_pam.so  uams_passwd.so  uams_randnum.so

So if anyone has a x86 ReadyNAS and access to the Mac OS X Lion developer preview they should be able to verify that AFP works fine currently on x86 ReadyNAS with Mac OS X Lion.

mdgm wrote:
So if anyone has a x86 ReadyNAS and access to the Mac OS X Lion developer preview they should be able to verify that AFP works fine currently on x86 ReadyNAS with Mac OS X Lion.

Oops. Yep, should work because it is started from an alternate startup script ;) If you take a look at the process list, AFPd will be there with the dhx2 option enabled.

-Stefan

I can confirm that I do not have the dhx2. Are you all saying that it would be possible to upload a module to get it working? That would be pretty cool.

nas:~# ls /usr/lib/netatalk/
uams_clrtxt.so	uams_dhx_pam.so  uams_dhx_passwd.so  uams_dhx.so  uams_guest.so  uams_pam.so  uams_passwd.so

Working on that right now ;) Just need to confirm it works with Lion.

-Stefan

Ah, while I'm waiting for Lion to finish installing ... could some of you with Duo/NV(+) tell me what your output for

ls -al /usr/lib/libgc*

is? Thank's a lot!

-Stefan