Remove (AFP) and (CIFS) from OSX Finder - OS 6.1.6

I know this is bumping an old thread, but I had this question myself and couldn't find an answer. Now that I have a solution I'm posting it here so hopefully others will find helpful.

In RAIDiator 4.x Avahi services were advertised via the .service files in /etc/avahi/services. Simply editing the files to remove the (AFP) or (SMB) from the naming scheme would fix this issue. In OS 6, Avahi uses a different system to advertise some of the available services on the NAS.

I found that when I upgraded my ReadyNAS Pro 6 from 4.6 to 6.2.3 all the duplicated, crapped-up service names started showing up in the sidebar again on my Mac. The issue is that on OS 6, services like Netatalk(the AFP sharing service) automagically register themselves with Avahi via dbus. That's why they don't need a .service file in /etc/avahi/services anymore. The upshot of this is that if you're a sysadmin you don't need to create a .service XML file for everything you want to advertise. The downside is that on a commercial product like the ReadyNAS, it's difficult to edit or change this behavior. It's also difficult for another reason, which I'll get to below.

So, the way to change this behavior is to disable Netatalk's auto-registration with Avahi via dbus. In /etc/netatalk/afp.conf you need to add this line:

zeroconf = no

under the [Global] section of the file. With just this change, my afp.conf now looks like this:

# Do not edit.
[Global]
 uam list = uams_dhx.so uams_dhx2.so uams_guest.so
 save password = no
 unix charset = UTF8
 mac charset = MAC_ROMAN
 guest account = guest
 zeroconf = no     # <--- added by me.

[Homes]
 basedir regex = /home.*/

include = /etc/frontview/netatalk/Shares.conf
include = /etc/netatalk/timemachine.conf

Yours might be slightly different depending on whether or not you have Time Machine enabled.

Now we get to the part where everything gets rather kludgy. There is a process or script somewhere on the system that fires off whenever you either enable or disable AFP using the Frontview dashboard that overwrites /etc/netatalk/afp.conf with a fresh copy every. single. time. After fighting it for about an hour I could find neither the script responsible nor the source file it was using to generate the new copy. The only way I found to keep my changes to this file was this:

chattr +i /etc/netatalk/afp.conf

This must be run as root, and sets the "immutable" property on the file, so that it can only be edited or deleted by the root user.

Once set, the file can't be altered by whatever the Frontview triggers on enabling or disabling of AFP. From this point forward, trying to toggle AFP from the dashboard will produce an error and fail. It must be turned on and off at the command line. Major bonus to whoever can tell me what's causing the Frontview to do this and how to edit or stop it at the source.

Now, because this change to afp.conf prevents netatalk from automatically advertising via Avahi, you'll have to write your own afpd.service file to place into /etc/avahi/services if you want your AFP share to show up in the Finder. Google for examples, there's plenty out there.

As much as I don't really like this fix, it's something that only has to be done once, or whenever you need to edit your AFP configuration. Hopefully this should be rarely.

--B