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Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

Just noticed that another beta of Netatalk 2.2 was released on Friday (http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/2.2/ReleaseNotes2.2beta2.html). It includes AFP 3.3 which I believe is the latest version of AFP! This is great news! Looks like the Netatalk team are making great progress with their project. Hopefully we'll see a stable version of Netatalk 2.2 released by them well before Lion.
Message 26 of 162
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

For those interested you can take a look at the GIT log for Netatalk: http://netatalk.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=netatalk/netatalk;a=log

There's going to be a beta4, so it's still a little while off from a stable release.
Message 27 of 162
schalliol
Aspirant

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

I'd be interested in this for x86. I'd be happy to test.
Message 28 of 162
WhoCares_
Mentor

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

Well I was under the impression the new version would be included in 4.2.16. Alas, it isn't so it seems I really have to build that add-on for all those Mac beta users out there 😉

-Stefan
Message 29 of 162
schalliol
Aspirant

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

+1!!
Message 30 of 162
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

Well Netatalk 2.2 beta has dragged on for longer than expected (at least that's my impression from reading the GIT log). I would've been very surprised if NetGear put an unstable Netatalk version in the firmware especially considering Lion's still probably months away from release.
Message 31 of 162
stalker1
Aspirant

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

I tried to install the update LionAFPd_2.1.3-rns-0.1.2.bin on a ReadyNAS Duo with RAIDiator 4.1.7 [1.00a043].

When connection from Mac OS X 10.7 Developer Preview II is still get the "The version of the server you are trying to connect to is not supported."

Anyone have any ideas?

Best regards,
Stalker

nas:/# ls -al /usr/lib | grep libgc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 Apr 11 21:54 libgcrypt.so.11 -> libgcrypt.so.11.5.3
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 497680 Feb 25 17:29 libgcrypt.so.11.5.3

ls /usr/lib/netatalk
uams_clrtxt.so uams_dhx2_passwd.so uams_dhx_pam.so uams_dhx.so uams_pam.so uams_randnum.so
uams_dhx2_pam.so uams_dhx2.so uams_dhx_passwd.so uams_guest.so uams_passwd.so
Message 32 of 162
stalker1
Aspirant

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

I got this working. Sucessfully connected to an AFP-share mounted through Finder.

I changed the startup-options for afpd in /etc/netatalk/afpd.conf and added uams_dhx2.so

- -uamlist uams_clrtxt.so,uams_dhx.so,uams_dhx2.so -nosavepassword -unixcodepage UTF8 -maccodepage MAC_ROMAN -setuplog "default log_info /var/log/netatalk.log"


TimeMachine isn't working.
Message 33 of 162
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

As I think has been mentioned before Netatalk 2.2 will be required for Time Machine on Lion to work when backing up to a ReadyNAS.
Message 34 of 162
glawrie
Aspirant

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

I managed to get PR 2 (updated) version of Lion to connect to an AFP share on my ReadyNAS NV+ OK, simply by enabling LionAFPd_2.1.3-rns-0.1.2.bin extension and restarting AFP, which is great.

But despite this goodness, I can confirm TimeMachine doesn't want to connect to the ReadyNAS.

Fingers crossed for a Netatalk 2.2. update to LionAFPd or something appearing from Netgear... 🙂
Message 35 of 162
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

Netatalk 2.2 is still in beta and Lion is still likely months away from release to the general public, so I don't I think there's any urgent need for NetGear to include Netatalk 2.2 in the firmware at the moment. So you could be waiting a while.
Message 36 of 162
glawrie
Aspirant

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

mdgm wrote:
I don't I think there's any urgent need for NetGear to include Netatalk 2.2 in the firmware at the moment. So you could be waiting a while.

We use a ReadyNAS to backup a handful of Macs across a network. Has worked pretty well for a couple of years, and nothing much wrong with the box or the disks. So would be disappointing to have to replace it simply to get it to behave nicely with Lion - and I suspect we'll be upgrading to Lion pretty promptly after it arrives. Based on experience, and comments elsewhere in this forum, there appears to be no grounds for certainty that Netgear will upgrade the AFP on the NV+ series of boxes at all, which would leave us in a bit of a bind.

I suppose we'd look to replace the box with whatever equivalent NAS device provides the appropriate level of AFP support soonest: we had a good look at the options a few weeks ago, and currently we think the Synology DS1511+ is the best replacement, with the Ultra 4 plus coming in close behind... but both lots of $$ for not a huge improvement in functionality.

Anyhow - we'll keep our fingers crossed.
Message 37 of 162
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

I would expect Netatalk to get updated, but you should note that NetGear doesn't support beta OSes or beta software. They will stick with a stable version of Netatalk for now as running a stable version would be better for the vast majority of users. One would hope that a stable Netatalk 2.2 will be released well before Lion goes final which should hopefully give plenty of time for NetGear to incorporate it into the ReadyNAS firmware before Lion's release. Netatalk 2.2 will of course also be of benefit to users of older Mac OSes than Lion.

If you look at Synology, they are running a port of a very old version of Netatalk: http://www.netafp.com/status-of-netatalk-and-afp-support-by-nas-vendor-322/

From reading that article, I have deep concerns with AFP support on Synology. I do think that running such an old version of Netatalk is disgraceful and means they are a poor alternative for Mac users.
Message 38 of 162
glawrie
Aspirant

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

mdgm wrote:
I do think that running such an old version of Netatalk is disgraceful and means they are a poor alternative for Mac users.
I'm not sure I'd go quite as far as 'disgraceful', but interesting all the same. I had never really thought that all the NAS vendors would use basically the same AFP code. It looks like many of the OS X NAS issues ReadyNAS has with AFP that show up in other fora too (e.g. poor transfer rates for shipping large numbers of small files) - suggesting that these may well be Netatalk issues rather than specific stuff to do with the NAS vendor.

One pundit suggests part of the Lion issue is due to Apple discontinuing support for an older AFP authentication strategy, in favour of a newer but more processor intensive alternative.
Rumor has it that some NAS vendors intentionally disable DHX2 in netatalk because it’s a lot more CPU intensive. This could lead to longer login times when accessing AFP shares on NAS’ units with slow CPUs.
We haven't done proper tests, but getting a connection to the NV+ with LionAFPd running does appear to take longer than without - but there may be many other factors in play. But maybe enabling support for Lion AFP on the NV+ series may make it run like a dog anyhow... which brings us back to looking for replacement NAS units with powerful processors (and so the Ultra Plus and DS1511+ etc.)

Would be interesting to know what solution Apple use for their Time Capsule box - presumably not Netatalk - and whether there are alternative solutions NAS vendors could use (e.g. not open source). NAS boxes are not cheap, so vendors coughing up for functional commercial software might be economic if such worked better.
Message 39 of 162
sphardy1
Apprentice

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

glawrie wrote:
Would be interesting to know what solution Apple use for their Time Capsule box - presumably not Netatalk - and whether there are alternative solutions NAS vendors could use (e.g. not open source). NAS boxes are not cheap, so vendors coughing up for functional commercial software might be economic if such worked better.

Apple use a version of OSX with their own closed source AFP implementation, just as they do on all their hardware.

Changed authentication is commonly a cause of incompatibility as companies like Apple (and Microsoft with SMB/CIFS) look to improve security and 3rd party installations then play 'catch up' - which will always be the case given Apple specify AFP and so will always be ahead when it comes to latest feature support.

There is no guarantee that paying for 3rd party commericial software - if it even exists - will mean better support than very widely used open-source implementations, such as netatalk in this instance. In either case NAS vendors will have to keep up to date with the latest available software - the link @mdgm quoted shows clearly that not all NAS vendors are doing this - but will seldom deploy beta software in production firmware to support a 3rd party beta software (ie Lion in this case, which as AFAIK has no formal public release date)

Based on experience, and comments elsewhere in this forum, there appears to be no grounds for certainty that Netgear will upgrade the AFP on the NV+ series of boxes at all, which would leave us in a bit of a bind.

Neither has any other vendor guaranteed every model of NAS they produce will have upgraded AFP support for Lion
Message 40 of 162
WhoCares_
Mentor

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

Moreover, since Netgear is one of the major sponsors of the Netatalk project, it's likely that Netgear will have a working implementation first 😉 Wouldn't make much sense to invest in a project and then not use it.

-Stefan
Message 41 of 162
glawrie
Aspirant

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

sphardy wrote:
Neither has any other vendor guaranteed every model of NAS they produce will have upgraded AFP support for Lion
No, of course. But I wasn't commenting about general policies, just considering probabilities - it sounds like NV+ maybe reaching point where it is no longer going to be updated, which would have implications for what we do.

Regarding your other points - I'm not sure that it is always clear that Open Source provides a better solution than commercial software, nor am I convinced that commercial organisations relying on open source solutions to provide key features within their products is always in the customer's best interests. It is not obvious, for example, that the general solutions being promoted by Netatalk's commercial bits (industrial scale AFP solutions for big servers) are likely to inspire development of code that runs well on stripped down low power linux boxes and does just enough to support AFP over a small network. But if Netatalk project doesn't deliver the necessary code, potentially a raft of products will become unusable. Won't be Netatalk projects' fault if that happens, but a big headache for many all the same.

And for the avoidance of doubt (and to hopefully stop more statements of the obvious) I understand we're talking about issues with pre-release software etc. etc. One point of pre-release software is to give opportunities to work out issues that need to be fixed before the stuff is released. So some discussion about these issues needs to happen somehow (without infringing NDAs etc.). But of course YMMV
Message 42 of 162
sphardy1
Apprentice

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

glawrie wrote:
I'm not sure that it is always clear that Open Source provides a better solution than commercial software

I never claimed that
Message 43 of 162
dopefish3d
Aspirant

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

after using the AFP patch posted here (LionAFPd_2.1.3-rns-0.1.2.bin) for several days, i've had to remove it from my ReadyNAS NV+. Other 10.6 machines on the network were affected negatively by the update. While initial connections to the share did take longer as anticipated (and described by others), my media machines were unable to reliably stream video over the AFP share (in a huge variety of formats) without causing the video stream to stutter or halt every few minutes. Any ideas guys?
Message 44 of 162
WhoCares_
Mentor

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

Sure. The code you were using is spiced with lots of debug code. That's why it's way slower than it would normally be. The main intention for the patch was to test functionality with Lion, not usage in a production environment.

-Stefan
Message 45 of 162
dopefish3d
Aspirant

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

ahhh, somehow i missed that. I'm disabling the patch for now, and wont roll out the lion preview to any more machines just yet. Thanks for the info!
Message 46 of 162
boywithumbrella
Aspirant

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

WhoCares? wrote:
Ok, here we go:

LionAFPd_2.1.3-rns-0.1.2.bin

Wfm,ymmv. Use at your own risk 😉 After installation make sure to manually restart the AFP service using Frontview: "Services" -> "Protocols". Just disable and when finished re-enable. That's it. Same goes for de-installation of the add-on.

-Stefan


Thank you for your work!
Before installing I wanted to ask, how significantly does this addon/update affect performance?
I have a spare (older) MacBook running the Lion Developer Preview, it is not crucial however to access the NAS from it. So if this netatalk update uses significantly more CPU, I'd rather wait until my main MacBook is updated to Lion (after it comes out) - and then see if the situation changes.
Message 47 of 162
glawrie
Aspirant

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

Connection times are noticeably longer, but otherwise performance not noticeably affected. But if running, TM support breaks for all clients (i.e. it doesn't work for Lion either with or without, but with, Snow Leopard clients can't do TM either).
Message 48 of 162
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

Well for Lion you'd need Netatalk 2.2 anyway to do Time Machine. As for AFP things running much slower with debug code in there is to be expected.
Message 49 of 162
boywithumbrella
Aspirant

Re: AFP Out Of Date In OS X Lion

Thanks for the answers 😃
For TimeMachine I use an external HDD connected to my AirPort Extreme via USB (being on the safe side regarding protocol issues), so that wouldn't be a problem.
But if this update will impair AFP performance, I'll use NFS with Lion for the time being.
Message 50 of 162
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