Comments on: HowTo: Make Ubuntu A Perfect Mac File Server And Time Machine Volume [Update6]

By: John K

John K — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:45:08 +0000

Hey gang…

great tut! I have followed it for 2 machines (+1 mac to view them from) and gotten mixed results.

machine 1 = Ubu 9.10, ext3 fs shared out + the resumable vnc thing, all working perfectly, except that spotlight can’t index it because it’s not hfs+. That’s a bad thing for my Work Projects folder…

machine 2 = Deb 5 Squeeze, with a dedicated hfs+ drive just for this (in the hopes of getting spotlight to work). can’t seem to write to it, only read, can’t figure out why and don’t know where to start looking.

But here’s the even bigger problem, assuming I can figure out machine 2’s permissions issue… if both machines are running netatalk, the mac confuses one for the other and shows the same shares for both machines (it shows machine 1’s shares), even though the 2 lin boxes have different shares entirely, different static IPs, different mac addresses, you name it…

so why would the Finder be showing the shares from machine1 when browsing machine2? Where do I even begin to look for clues?

By: Jag Lally

Jag Lally — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:15:39 +0000

Hi,
Thankyou so much for this guide. It was perfect for my Ubuntu server. However, I recently installed Fedora 12 x64 and wanted to share how I got everything working using the guide and just the available rpms of netatalk 2.0.4.

1) using gui installer or yum install netatalk
2) configure the xml afp service for avahi as per this article instructions. can’t remember if avahi was already configured to start but you can do chkconfig avahi on
3) yum install nss-mdns.
4) edit /etc/nsswitch.conf
#hosts: db files nisplus nis dns
hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns

To test, use terminal to ping each other. e.g. ping .local and from fedora ping .local

Using Fedora remote desktop (vino), Avahi, I was able to use Apple Remote Desktop screen sharing.

hope this helps someone with fedora 12.

Jag

By: ldpub

ldpub — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:06:18 +0000

Thank you, works perfectly for me !!!Great Job

By: Kevin van Zonneveld

Kevin van Zonneveld — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:52:23 +0000

Awesome job! One of the best tuts ever.
Got it to work on Snow Leopard after 2 bumps, let me share:

1. Experimented with ddb, but had to change it back to the initial cdb in /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default
cause it was giving:

“The operation could not be completed because the original item for ‘Time Machine’ could not be found”

2. It’s important you figure out en0’s mac address and Don’t look at the Console’s: disk image path, cause putting an image in that location doesn’t work. You really need the _.sparsebundle, and nothing else, or you’ll get an:

“Error 45″

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:11:59 +0000

I’ve managed to get netatalk 2.0.5 up and running from the debian packages.. but I keep getting the authentication errors that others have mentioned. Has anyone worked out a solution for this?

By: Toby

Toby — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:10:28 +0000

Great tutorial. I had it all set up nicely, sharing an external drive, until I decided to swap the drive out for a larger one.
I copied everything directly across, but when trying to access it I would get an error: “The alias “XXXX” could not be opened, because the original item cannot be found”

Deleting all of the metadata files that OS X stores on the drive fixed the problem (basically delete everything in the root of the share that starts with a “.” – be careful)

Just posting in case others are having this issue.

By: Riccardo

Riccardo — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:11:35 +0000

Thanks a lot for this guide! It took a little time but it was worth it: everything works greatly and the transfer rate is far better then samba.
I use Mac Os X 10.5.8.

By: Tim Nelson

Tim Nelson — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:24:26 +0000

Quick tip about “Connection Failed”.

I had to shift to another server, and moved all my storage over to another box. I used the same IP and other settings. Despite repeated netatalk setups, I kept getting “Connection Failed.” The folders would even show in a finder popup window.

Turns out that when I moved the files over, I brought over the .AppleDB directories with them. AFP doesn’t like this, per this post: http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/HOWTO_Share_Directories_via_AFP.

If you simply go in and delete those .AppleDB directories from each share, everything will be hunky dory again on your new server.

By: Greg Haskins

Greg Haskins — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:14:07 +0000

Thanks for the tutorial; it was really helpful when setting up my file server. With Snow Leopard and Karmic, I was (at first) only able to get AFP sharing to work by compiling netatalk from source as you described to enable SSL. However, after reading the comments on Debian bug #191790 and a little investigation, I discovered that the stock version distributed in the repository is now good to go without the need to re-compile. In other words, step 1 could be much simpler: sudo aptitude install netatalk Evidently, the maintainers upstream have enabled DHX2 authentication support, but not activated it by default. Based on step 2 above, I edited /etc/netatalk/afpd.conf to use uams_dhx2.so instead of uams_dhx.so and now my 10.6 client connects just fine. (I haven't tested with any other versions, but DHX2 support for encrypted passwords has been built-in since OS X 10.2.) My /etc/netatalk/afpd.conf: - -transall -uamlist uams_dhx2.so -nosavepassword -advertise_ssh Perhaps in the future the package maintainers will activate DHX2 by default (rendering this one-time step unnecessary), but until then, this is a lot simpler than recompiling. Plus, this means you can now safely upgrade to new releases of netatalk without breaking your setup. Thanks again for the excellent post.

By: LTO Ultrium Tape

LTO Ultrium Tape — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:25:51 +0000

great discussion! i have installed Ubuntu some days back and was quiet unaware with how to deal with this… but your post and further discussion told me a lot… really great post.. thanks to share

By: Jared

Jared — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:16:02 +0000

There goes that, i went to transfer a 6 gig folder of music, 1.5 gigs in, i get an (error -36) from Tiger 10.4. now trying to connect just freezes my file manager (mac). sigh, I’m currently looking into it.

By: Neil Sielski

Neil Sielski — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 06:53:40 +0000

Is there any way to change the represented icon for a Windows server to make it show as a xServe? (like step 5, but on windows server 2003)

By: Tod

Tod — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 14:09:26 +0000

Great tutorial, thank you. I have afp sharing working great and avahi advertising the server.

Howerver, TimeMachine continuted to fail to create the first backup with the error 45.

Any ideas what I’m missing?? Thanks in advance. Below are the details.

ubuntu server 9.10
OSX 10.6.2

I used hdiutil to manually create a volume on my desktop. I then copied the com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID xml file with my guiid inside into that new sparsebundle. The I copied that sparsebundle to the server.

In watching the mac’s syslog it looks like Time Machine is not using the sparsebundle I created.

For example.
1) When I create a sparsebundle named “hostname.sparsebundle” then TimeMachine fails trying to create “hostname 1.sparsebundle.”
2) When I create a sparsebundle named “hostname 1.sparsebundle” then TimeMachine fails trying to create “hostname.sparsebundle.”

Here is a snipped from my Mac’s sys log file.

23:11:37 new-host /Applications/System Preferences.app/Contents/MacOS/System Preferences[15755]: TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes is set to TRUE which allows selection of unsupported Time Machine network destination volumes. Use of an unsupported network destination can result in silent data corruption and complete loss of backup data under certain circumstances!
23:11:43 new-host UnmountAssistant[15768]: Volume unmounted successfully
23:12:09 new-host com.apple.backupd[15584]: Starting standard backup
23:12:09 new-host com.apple.backupd[15584]: Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/backup-2
23:12:09 new-host com.apple.backupd[15584]: Creating disk image /Volumes/backup-2/hostname 1.sparsebundle
23:12:10 new-host hdiejectd[15776]: running
23:12:20 new-host hdiejectd[15776]: quitCheck: calling exit(0)
23:15:57 new-host com.apple.backupd[15584]: Error 45 creating backup disk image
23:15:57 new-host com.apple.backupd[15584]: Failed to create disk image
23:16:02 new-host com.apple.backupd[15584]: Backup failed with error: 20
23:16:02 new-host com.apple.backupd[15584]: Ejected Time Machine network volume.

By: Frank

Frank — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 12:20:09 +0000

Actually I did manage to add the vnc service by adding

_rfb._tcp
5901

on the .service file, but I want to remove the second vnc service announce.

Thank you

By: Frank

Frank — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 12:14:31 +0000

Hi,

Great tutorial, and I see it’s still growing! I have 9.10 and by default the VNC service is broadcasted. With that the afp service is broadcasted, but with an other name.

The afpd.service file you use is perfect because I can change the name and the icon, Perfect! But the vnc service is broadcasted as “%u’s remote desktop on %h”. How can I change that? Also, how can I see all the services that avahi is broadcasting, like firefly etc…
Thank you allot.

By: Gareth

Gareth — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:27:18 +0000

For those who are having trouble with Ubuntu 9.10, I found this link solved all problems with installing Netatalk 2.0.5 with apt-get

http://notepad.bobkmertz.com/2010/01/apple-time-machine-backups-to-ubuntu.html

By: batDan

batDan — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:51:28 +0000

On my Debian Squeeze server an apt-get dist-upgrade lately left my netatalk unable to be connected from Macs. In the server’s syslog I found this line:
afpd[20786]: PAM DHX2: libgcrypt versions mismatch. Need: 1745620456

Unfortunately someone forgot, that the Squeeze netatalk package needs a newer version of the package libgcrypt11 than Squeeze is offering at the moment.

So I compiled a new libgcrypt11 package (1.4.5-1):

aptitude build-dep libgcrypt11
cd /usr/local/src
wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/libg/libgcrypt11/libgcrypt11_1.4.5.orig.tar.gz
tar xvf libgcrypt11_1.4.5.orig.tar.gz
cd libgcrypt-1.4.5
wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/libg/libgcrypt11/libgcrypt11_1.4.5-1.debian.tar.gz
tar xvf libgcrypt11_1.4.5-1.debian.tar.gz
wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/libg/libgcrypt11/libgcrypt11_1.4.5-1.dsc
dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc
dpkg -i libgcrypt11_1.4.5-1_amd64.deb (system architecture may vary, insert yours instead of “amd64″)
The other packages build by dpkg-buildpackage I guess are not necessary, but I installed them all too:
dpkg -i libgcrypt11-dev_1.4.5-1_amd64.deb
dpkg -i libgcrypt11-dbg_1.4.5-1_amd64.deb
dpkg -i libgcrypt11-doc_1.4.5-1_all.deb

/etc/init.d/netatalk restart
And I was able to connect to the Server, after as usually deleting the .AppleDB directories in the root of all afp server volumes.

Hope this helps someone. Since the new libgcrypt11 package is already available in Sid (unstable), you could also install it from there if you want to mess around in your sources.list …

By: maze

maze — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:17:02 +0000

This must be the most elaborate article on the subject I’ve ever seen, great work! It really helped me setting up all of this in under five minutes.

Thanks,

maze

By: Jared

Jared — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:42:51 +0000

Been trying to set up my file server all week and an hour or so later after finding this tutorial I’m golden. First SSHFS, then HFS, which with tiger required finagling, then i find this. Great stuff. So I’m just rocking SSH and AFP and thats all i need.

By: McMara

McMara — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:38:55 +0000

Thanks, Dough. Worked for me as well for the source 2.0.5 stable.
Great blog with great information this one.

Jack

By: Juan Ortuno

Juan Ortuno — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:08:03 +0000

Tried, but the settings don’t “stick”, even though I have full rights of the folder, and I’m the owner.
As soon as I hit “apply”, the settings revert to the previous.

By: Theuntje

Theuntje — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:57:23 +0000

Can’t you just select in ubuntu/windows *hide hidden folder*?

By: Juan Ortuno

Juan Ortuno — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:15:17 +0000

I had a problem using “allow:username”, even after entering my user name didn’t work.
Take out that portion and just leave it like this:

/media/movies “movies” cnidscheme:cdb options:usedots, upriv

After you change the configuration file, restart the netatalk services: sudo /etc/init.d/netatalk restart

I had some trouble at the beginning too, and this worked for me. Good luck.

By: Juan Ortuno

Juan Ortuno — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:10:00 +0000

Does anyone know how to get rid of (or avoid creation of) these two folders: Network Trash Folder and Temporary Items.

They get created on every root shared folder that I access from my Mac via AFP. While not visible to the Mac, they are visible to Windows and through Ubuntu when using the command line.
I’ve tried deleting them, but they keep reappearing. I do not want a “Network Trash.”
Searching online hasn’t been much help.
Anyone?

By: Yohann

Yohann — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:42:26 +0000

@K6Martini : in the two cases I browse the disk with mac osx. But on one side, its via direct usb, and on the second side its via network sharing (netatalk).

By: K6Martini

K6Martini — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:10:35 +0000

This lies in the way you changed the icon. Linux and Mac OS (and windows) have different ways of “attatching” the file to the icon. The customized icon is not seen in Linux because of the way Mac OS does it. Im pretty sure you will have to re-assign custom icons in each OS.

By: K6Martini

K6Martini — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:52:22 +0000

I am having issues using this with 2 Machines on a single LAN my computer (OS X.5) sees the same share for both machines, ie connecting to “K-UBUNTU” yeild the K-Ubuntu share, but connecting to my second computer “K-FRAME” also pulls up the K-Ubuntu share. I swear I have had this set up on 3 different machines at once without any problems, only difference I can think of this that this time one of my Ubuntu machines is 9.04 and the other is 9.10.

Anyone have any ideas???

By: Yohann

Yohann — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:18:45 +0000

Hi all,

I have followed this guide to enable a TM and a shared file server on ubuntu.

I have just encountered one problem :

When i lauch the external disk on my mac, I see my customized icons (for example on movie files I insert the poster as icon).
But when i see it through the file server, i can not see the customized icons but only the default one.

I used usedots option if it can help.

By: Axel

Axel — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:25:51 +0000

Hi. The installation of ‘build-dep’ via apt-get install on Ubuntu Karmic failed, because the package doesn’t exists. But I found the dpkg-buildpackage tool in the ‘dpkg-dev’ package now. Hope it saves somebodies time

Thanks,
Axel

By: Leo

Leo — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 03:27:16 +0000

I’m in the process of backing up my files to my Linux box and so far things are working great. I had to create the sparsebundle image as mentioned in the tutorial above.

I have a question though. Once the backup is finished, I plan to move my iTunes library from the hard drive to the USB drive that used to be my TimeMachine backup and then I want to add this drive as well to the backup. My question is, will I need to create a second sparseimage file for the USB when added?

Thanks,
Leo

By: dan

dan — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:31:42 +0000

I’ve followed this tutorial word by word on both Ubuntu 9.10 and Debian 5. And never succeeded in getting the server to show up under shared devices in the left pane of the finder
Anyone else have the same problem?

Just thought I’d add the some netstat info from the debian box:

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:548 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2387/afpd
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:4700 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2385/cnid_metad
udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:39358 0.0.0.0:* 2091/avahi-daemon:
udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:5353 0.0.0.0:* 2091/avahi-daemon:
udp6 0 0 :::41490 :::* 2091/avahi-daemon:
udp6 0 0 :::5353 :::* 2091/avahi-daemon:

Those are all the daemons related to this right? Anything off?

Thanks
/dan

By: Leo

Leo — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:03:47 +0000

Figured it out. Didn’t actually rebuild the package because it was missing libcups2 package. After that was installed things worked perfectly. Thx!

By: Leo

Leo — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 03:36:46 +0000

Hi. Well, I’ve followed the steps in your article and have my home folder is showing up in the sidebar in Finder, but when I try connecting using Connect As…, I get:

There was an error connecting to the server. Check the server name or IP address and try again.

Any ideas? Thanks, Leo

By: Juan Ortuno

Juan Ortuno — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:59:54 +0000

I used the steps on this guide to create my sparsebundle image on my Mac, and then copied the image to my SMB TimeMachine share, and it worked fine.
Time Machine automatically mounts the share every time it needs to do its backups, and automatically dismounts it when it’s done.

I only had to manually mount the share once to have it show under the list of drives under Time Machine. After that, it’s all automatic.

The only thing that does bother me, and this has been happening for a while now even before changing the location of my TM, is that Time Machine will automatically attempt to back-up every hour – even when I’m not on the same network where the TM drive is. The TM icon “spins” for a few seconds, and then it stops, with the message “Latest Backup: Delayed”.
It will do this for as long as the Mac is not connected to my home network where I have the Ubuntu server and Time Machine backup share, but after connecting to my home network the backup proceeds as usual…

As far as I can remember, the original behavior of Time Machine wasn’t like this. I think (I could be wrong), that it detected that the current network wasn’t where the TM backup was, and it didn’t attempt to do the backup until it was back to its “TM” network.

Does anyone have a solution to this? “How to stop TM from attempting to back-up every hour when the backup disk is not connected.”

It’s not a problem (for now), but a minor nuisance I’d say.

By: Nathan Koch

Nathan Koch — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 03:32:57 +0000

Awesome tutorial. Needs to be updated. With a little reading and following comments from people in the thread I was able to figure it out. But yes. Comment out all lines in afpd.conf.

This tutorial is so great in needs to be put up on a wiki. So that more devs can update it as the thread is kinda old.

By: roses delivery

roses delivery — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 21:22:37 +0000

great job! I’m wondering about automatising some processes – this is really useful article. thanks guys!

By: nat

nat — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 21:12:42 +0000

Can someone explain what i need to add to the applesvolume.default to get all of my media hard drives to show up on my mac?

for example i have

/media/movies “movies” allow:username cnidscheme:cdb options:upriv

doesnt seem to be working.

By: Theuntje

Theuntje — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:05:19 +0000

I don’t have that file.. Am I suposed to?

By: eulogious

eulogious — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:07:44 +0000

Great guide! I have this up and running on my gentoo box, and have had it running for over a year, thanks to this guide. I just ran some upgrades and updated to netatalk 2.0.5-r1 and everything is working great after I fixed all the broke packages! Thanks for the guide and all the tips!

By: eulogious

eulogious — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:04:30 +0000

The reason TM doesn’t work over pptp is because pptp doesn’t forward broadcast, which is how bonjour works, so therefore how TM locates the drive. You might be able to mount the drive manually and then start your back up that way, but I have not tried that. You could also manual mount the TM backup, and then try running the back up over you pptp tunnel, but again, I haven’t tried it so I don’t know if it would work.

By: TTiSoB

TTiSoB — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:32:02 +0000

Hi Kremalicious, maybe something to the guide:

For all running Snow Leopard and wondering why the sparsebundle you create doesn’t work with Snow Leopard…

The sparsebundle doesn’t have to be named like computername_0014e3856bd0.sparsebundle. There does have to be a file included in the sparsebundle referring to the UUID of your machine.

A guide on how to create the sparsebundle can be found at http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=184462

By: TTiSoB

TTiSoB — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:26:05 +0000

Hi there Juan, Good question.. got the same setup here and I don’t know either why I did all above. Only guess I can make is that with netatalk/avahi the timemachine share would be automatically mounted.. something I don’t know for sure if a samba share will do.

By: Juan Ortuno

Juan Ortuno — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:11:57 +0000

I have been able to install and configure Samba to share files with my Mac (10.6.2) and it works fine; my attempts to install netatalk have failed multiple times (missing dependencies, can’t find this, or that..)
Even Time Machine works by following the steps mentioned above, I’m able to use TM to back-up to my smb share (after creating the sparse img).
The way I have it now it’s working on smb. My Ubuntu server automatically shows up on my Finder, and clicking on it takes me to my shares (I saved my login info to my keychain).
I don’t see the need to go through all this trouble and install netatalk (only one Mac at home).
So, please, excuse my ignorance – could someone please tell me WHY I should bother with netatalk if smb already works as I need it to?
Thanks.

By: Runar

Runar — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:12:31 +0000

Short question;

Is there a HOWTO for enabling all this services over VPN? Preferable pptp?

It works great over ethernet, but once connected over VPN(pptp) it stop working.

Regards Runar

By: Rune

Rune — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 11:30:21 +0000

Great tutorial/howto, Krema!

Thanks to you I have been able to set up shared documents, iTunes and iPhoto library on my Ubuntu server.

Being a Linux newbie I encountered a problem regarding permissions. I was able to figure it out, though, and perhaps someone else can make use of my experience.

Make sure that your Linux share point, e.g. /home/shared/photos, is set up belonging to the group of users (e.g. users) that you want to access the share:

sudo chgrp users /home/shared/photos

In addition to read and write permissions for the folder, make sure that all files created in that folder inherits the group setting using the “sticky bit”:

sudo chmod g+s /home/shared/photos

This way your iPhoto library is accessible for all users belonging to the group “users” in my example!

This may be kindergarden stuff for all you experienced Linux users, but maybe others in my situation can thrive on it. I have tried searching your blog for similar posts, but found none. I apologize if this is not the case…

By: Torleiv Flatebo

Torleiv Flatebo — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 19:41:43 +0000

Ubuntu 9.10, OSX Leopard

Could not connect to netatalk at all after reinstalling my Ubuntu box. avahi was working fine. Used all versions of netatalk described here. in /var/log/syslog I had entries like this whenever I would try to connect:

Jan 16 12:26:44 tor-desktop afpd[14272]: server_child[1] 15042 exited 1
Jan 16 12:26:44 tor-desktop afpd[15044]: ASIP session:548(5) from 192.168.1.105:59366(7)
Jan 16 12:26:44 tor-desktop afpd[14272]: server_child[1] 15044 done

These lines would show up when I clicked to connect to share, and no log lines after entering in my credentials, which told me the process was dying upon connect.

The solution was to comment out any lines in /etc/netatalk/afpd.conf and use the defaults. Work like a charm now!

BTW, stock netatalk for Ubuntu 9.10 will work with defaults.

By: Treanus

Treanus — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:35:11 +0000

I’m in the process of setting up the WD Sharespace 4T with AFP and Bonjour and wrote a blog about it.
It heavily relies on this page (thank you!), but is – of course – different from settings things up on Ubuntu…

If of interest to you, see http://web.me.com/stefan.sunaert/WD_Sharespace_OsX/

Stefan.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:43:32 +0000

Thanks @pippa. Once I “connect to server” that is my ubuntu machine I can navigate the directories in the share and I have write permissions. The share shows up in the “Browse Other Time Machine Disks” window, but when I navigate to it there are no backups available. When this drive is attached directly everything seems to be the same, except I can see the list of backups. I am pretty noobish, but would I have that level of access if ubuntu was having difficulties with the partition format?

By: Treanus

Treanus — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 11:15:10 +0000

Hi all,

fantastic guide!
I’m using this guide to get a WD Sharespace (4T) NAS working with my home Mac OsX 10.6 Server and other OsX 10.6 machines. The WD Sharespace is a busybox linux system, but does not support afpd out of the box. But netatalk it can be installed using the descriptions found on http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/netatalk-tutorial.

So far this NAS is giving me lots of problems to setup! I hate it… Nonetheless, after a week of trial&error, I got the user homes working (I hope! Need to test more).

Now I’m working on TimeMachine setup.
The question I have is: does one still need to specify the options:upriv,usedots in addition to the options:tm using the 2.0.5 netatalk package?

Best regards,

Stefan.

By: Pippa

Pippa — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 09:12:49 +0000

I’m not sure about this but I think that you have to format the partition as EXT4 because Ubuntu doesn’t manage to work HFS+ partitions.
So you have to format as EXT4, put in place all the above mentioned procedure and after it you will be able to work with your HDD.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 07:57:07 +0000

Thanks for this guide. I have this mostly working, my son’s MacBook can see the hfs+ partition on the USB HD shared on my Ubuntu 9.10 box. This USB drive was originall used locally on this same Mac, so it has about 15 backups on it. When I enter time machine as a share I don’t see any of these backups, when the drive is plugged in directly to the Mac they are present. What am I missing?

By: Or Tal

Or Tal — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 20:58:18 +0000

After fighting with time machine on Snow Leopard, I got it to work by upgrading netatalk to version 2.0.5. Here is a howto for debian:

% wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/n/netatalk/netatalk_2.0.5-2.dsc
% wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/n/netatalk/netatalk_2.0.5.orig.tar.gz
% wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/n/netatalk/netatalk_2.0.5-2.diff.gz
% tar xvf netatalk_2.0.5.orig.tar.gz
% zcat netatalk_2.0.5-2.diff.gz | patch -p0
% cd netatalk-2.0.5
% sudo DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=ssl dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
% sudo dpkg -i ../netatalk_2.0.5-2_amd64.deb
When prompt to replace your AppleVolumes.default file, just answer No.
Edit your /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default and add “,tm” to the end of your
volume options list. Mine looks like:
“/time_machine TimeMachine allow:ortal cnidscheme:cdb options:usedots,upriv,tm”

* While building the package you may encounter missing dependencies. use
apt-get install to solve them.
* It seems tht this version of netatalk is not backward compatible with the old one.
I had to delete all the content of my time machine volume for it to work.

By: TTiSoB

TTiSoB — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:05:22 +0000

@Pippa.. good to hear.. less good for me.. I don’t have Firestarter installed.. running ubuntu 9.10 server edition without it.

Will try installing firestarter if that solves the problem.

By: Pippa

Pippa — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:53:48 +0000

TTiSoB, take a look at my reply no.561…maybe works also for you!

By: Pippa

Pippa — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:51:48 +0000

Solved!
There is no bugs to fix, the only thing to fix is my brain: the problem was born from firestarter. I had opened both Afpovertcp and mdns ports via GUI but to have avahi work properly it’s necessary to insert those rules in the /etc/firestarter/user-pre file:

$IPT -A INPUT -s 224.0.0.0/8 -d 0/0 -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A INPUT -s 0/0 -d 224.0.0.0/8 -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A OUTPUT -s 224.0.0.0/8 -d 0/0 -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A OUTPUT -s 0/0 -d 224.0.0.0/8 -j ACCEPT

Thank you again to all the community and to Eric Tanguy for this post: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=189067

Now also Firefly works very well.

By: TTiSoB

TTiSoB — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:55:58 +0000

@Pippa: Bugreport on the issue
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/avahi/+bug/327362

By: TTiSoB

TTiSoB — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:49:17 +0000

@Pippa: From Ubuntu 9.10 release notes

Avahi will always start even if a .local domain is present

The avahi-daemon package, which implements the mDNS “zeroconf” standard, formerly included a check to avoid running when a conflicting .local DNS domain is present, as it was reported that some ISPs advertise such a .local domain on their networks, leaving Ubuntu hosts unable to see names advertised on the local network (327362). In Ubuntu 9.10, avahi-daemon is started regardless.

It is possible that this may cause other problems. If your network is configured this way, you can disable mDNS using the following command:

sudo stop avahi-daemon
sudo sed -e ‘/^start/,+1s/^/#/’ /etc/init/avahi-daemon.conf

Have to try this myself if it works…

By: TTiSoB

TTiSoB — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:44:29 +0000

Hi there Pippa,

Got the same problem here with Avahi, running Snow Leopard 10.6.2 and Ubuntu Karmic 9.10. Ubuntu has a static IP address.

AFP is working, but I can’t get the server to show up in the Finder automatically (have to Connect to Server to get the server in Finder) or use iTunes to connect to FireFly.

Will try if running Ubuntu 8.04 instead will solve the problem.

By: Pippa

Pippa — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:08:20 +0000

Hi,
I have some upgrades: i’ve noticed that if I disable DHCP on the internet side network interface, my server’s avahi-daemon works very well. But this means that I will not connect to internet because the interface can’t get an IP address from the PPPoE server.
Unfortunately, I NEED internet access so I have to enable DHCP and mdns service becomes undiscoverable on the network.

Any ideas on how to fix this issue?

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:18:48 +0000

See my post below concerning authenticaiton libraires in /usr/lib/netatalk.

You might need to modify your afpd.conf file to use dhx2.

Regards.

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:13:00 +0000

I just solved my login problem.

In 2.0.4 on my working Ubuntu TimeMachine, in /usr/lib/netatalk, location of the authenticaiton libraries, there is clrtxt, dhx, dhx2, randnum, etc. However in 2.0.5, there is only clrtxt, and dhx2.

I changed the afpd.conf file to this:

- -transall -uamlist uams_clrtxt.so,uams_dhx2.so, -nosavepassword

And now I can login to the share without issue.

Hope this helps someone.

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:24:12 +0000

I’ve successfully compiled 2.0.5 on an Ubuntu 9.10 VM under VirtualBox, and can see the server being advertised via Avahi, but when I try and connect, I get invalid password. I know the password is correct. I disabled roaming, but am not sure that that had anything to do with my issue since I see the advertisement of the share.

Any ideas?

I already have TimeMachine running fine on Ubuntu 9.10 and netatalk 2.0.4 on real hardware, and was trying to get 2.0.5 running.

By: Seb

Seb — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:04:14 +0000

Thanks for this great howto.

By: David

David — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:28:18 +0000

Thank you so much for putting that much love and spirit into this description. This was _exactly_ the thing I was looking for in days and weeks! It reads easily enough… my mom wouldn’t understand it, but never mind.
Thanks again for putting it up and updating it with news that becomes available. Well done.

– David

By: Pippa

Pippa — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:46:59 +0000

Hi folks and thank you Krema for this fantastig HowTo.
With my previous server’s configuration all was fine: I was running netatalk 2.0.3 and avahi on a Ubuntu 8.10 machine with Leopard 10.5.8 client.
Now I’ve upgraded both my server (Ubuntu 9.10 server) and my MacBook (Snow Leopard 10.6.2) but I can’t manage to get the avahi services discovered by both MacBook and another PC with Win Seven (I have Mt-daapd installed on my server and iTunes on PC can’t connect to my shared library).
Netatalk runs correctly because I can connect manually and transfer files correctly but I’ve tried to manage almost all avahi configs whitout fix any issue although the daemons log all appear to be fine.
Anyone has any idea?

Next step I will try to downgrade to Netatalk 2.0.4 and check if there may be some compatibility issues between Avahi and Netatalk…but I have not so much hope.

By: A

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:59:46 +0000

Forgot to say running Leopard 10.5.8 and gentoo. Netatalk-2.0.5 & avahi-0.6.25

By: A

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:39:56 +0000

Hi. Thanks for the great guide. Works perfectly apart from…

I am unable to connect by clicking on the advertised share in Finders side bar. I select it, click “connect as” and then get the “Connection Failed” message. I don’t get the opportunity to enter a user name and password.

If I press “Command + K” and type in my servers hostname I am then presented with the username and password dialogue and can mount all my shares.

Any ideas? Thanks….

By: Huub

Huub — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 22:38:01 +0000

For snow leopard and error 45 see http://www.markdeepwell.com/2009/11/using-ubuntu-for-time-machine-in-snow-leopard/

By: Bart van Bragt

Bart van Bragt — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 18:50:39 +0000

@adam: You can delete all these files, they are a result of compiling your own netatalk debian package but those files are no longer needed after installing said package.

BTW I can also confirm that Debian Squeeze (which contains netatalk 2.0.4-2 at the moment) supports uams_dhx2.so which means that there is no need to compile your own netatalk package in Debian Squeeze. Just replace uams_dhx.so with uams_dhx2.so in the instructions above.

By: adam

adam — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:41:26 +0000

I’ve just started using UBUNTU this weekend, after coming across this tutorial last year I thought I’d get confident and give it a go. Its worked wonderfully and I can see the new machine right across my mac network – so thank you very much!
I was wondering what of the files left in the home folder were required, I’m guessing nothing. I don’t want to delete them without expert advice. These are the files/folders in question:

netatalk-2.0.4~beta2
netatalk_2.0.4~beta2-5ubuntu2_amd64.changes
netatalk_2.0.4~beta2-5ubuntu2_amd64.deb
netatalk_2.0.4~beta2-5ubuntu2.diff.gz
netatalk_2.0.4~beta2-5ubuntu2.dsc
netatalk_2.0.4~beta2.orig.tar.gz

Feedback would be gratefully received.

By: Markus

Markus — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:30:26 +0000

I did a manual 2.0.5 netatalk configuration on linux 9.10 with the support of this guide. I once was able to login and browse files in the home directory on the linux server. Unfortunately, I changed my config and I can’t go back to a proper config The main problem I have is the following:

How can I enable logging so I get more information what avahi-daemon and netatalk are trying to do?

How can I check a proper service functionality using command line utilities? Both on the linux server and the mac client?

By: Daryn

Daryn — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:48:56 +0000

Before I go spelunking with a packet sniffer, has anyone figured out what it takes to register the netatalk server with “back to my mac”? I know it involves an ipsec tunnel, and possibly kerberos on the netatalk server.

By: Curtis

Curtis — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:42:44 +0000

I was also able to get AFP to work on Gentoo. I was not able to get the .sparsebundle to work; I have a brand spanking new MacBook Pro and the name of the sparsebundle was not in the form seen above. It kept trying to create it (the tmp file would show up and then be deleted after a TimeMachine error) no mater what I tried. Gentoo is still stuck with netatalk 2.0.3-r4 but I found an ebuild for 2.0.4. I modified the 2.0.4 ebuild to install 2.0.5 and everything worked fine; all I did was rename the patch from 2.0.4 -> 2.0.5 and renamed the 2.0.4 ebuild to 2.0.5. I know I know…not ideal but all works so I guess I dodged a bullet. Here is the bug report containing netatalk-2.0.4.ebuild and xfs patch. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=279057

By: Runar

Runar — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:12:23 +0000

Try disabling roaming mode on your network connection as stated here: http://bit.ly/7Yv2cS

If you don’t have Network in your System > Administration menu, install Gnome Network Administration Tool (gnome-network-admin).

By: MacObelix

MacObelix — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:46:40 +0000

Great!! Tanks very much.

By: Mike Somerville

Mike Somerville — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:01:53 +0000

I had this working great until I had an issue with my Ubuntu machine and I had to rebuild it from scratch. I have a RAID 5 (built with mdadam) on this machine for all my music, videos and pictures. After I rebuilt the sever I couldn’t access the ADM share. I would see it in finder but when I would select it I would just get a beach ball of doom forever. I deleted the .AppleDB, .AppleDesktop and .AppleDouble files and directories and all was fine after that.

Just so you know I am using netatalk 2.03 on a Ubuntu 8.04 machine with a mixture of Leopard and Snow Leopard machines.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:33:15 +0000

Michael, I don’t have direct experience with your latest problem with updating Netatalk 2.0.4 to 2.0.5, but I’ve been doing a lot of research on this over the last few days and think I’ve seen a solution to your problem.

Try deleting the .AppleDB file from the Ubuntu directory. You should then be able to connect from OS X. That’s what I’ve seen from some other posts anyway, but haven’t had this problem and haven’t tried this solution. Hope it helps!

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:16:17 +0000

Thank you for this great tutorial and also for all of the many helpful followup posts. As some have pointed out it can get a little confusing with the different versions (Netatalk/Ubuntu/Os X) and there seems to be a number of pitfalls that you can encounter when compiling/installing Netatalk. I’m pretty comfortable compiling and installing software, but I was never able to get Netatalk 2.0.5 compiled and installed on Ubuntu 9.10. I worked through a number of dependency issues and I’m not even sure exactly what my lastest problem was, but no success!

Then I found this post:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1341810

Post #3 mentions:

‘deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian sid main’ – added to ‘/etc/apt/sources.list’

Once you add that source you can then install 2.0.5-2 from Package Manger. Wow! So easy!

After installing Netatalk 2.0.5 then all of the remaining configuration steps worked for me as explained in this tutorial on Ubuntu 9.10 and connecting from Snow Leopard (I have 2 Macbooks and a Hackintosh desktop).

As Michael posted above, for Snow Leopard setting up your sparse bundle needs more than a mac address in the file name. There is a great script that you can find here that will create the bundle for you.

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=184462

I’ve been using this method (creating the bundle with this script) for backing up my Macbooks to my Hackintosh since Snow came out and it works great. Almost! I have however had some problems with the sparse bundles becoming corrupted after a period of time, so that is why I’ve been experimenting with this.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has had problems with their sparse bundles corrupting after time. Both of my Macbooks are put into sleep mode regularly and I don’t run the Hackintosh 24/7 so I suspect that problem comes from some combination of sleeping the Macbooks and turning off the Hack while Time Machine is in operation. I haven’t been able to nail down the cause and it usually take several months for it to happen, but I’ve it has now happened several times and once it does happen the sparse bundle is totally corrupted and even Disk Manger can’t repair it. My Linux box runs 24/7 so I’m hoping that backing up to it will eliminate this problem. Time Machine is one of the great things about OS X, but when your backup goes South all of a sudden for no explained reason then it doesn’t seem so great any more!

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:28:02 +0000

I had this working like a dream on 9.10 with 2.0.4 and then like a fool I installed 2.0.5-2 over the top and now I get the Connection Failed error. I kept my old config files so

1. Does anyone know where I might find the original config files which come with 2.0.5? I don’t know how to uninstall and reinstall without it just reinstalling as per the first install I did.

2. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what’s wrong with the bloody thing?!

By: john

john — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:47:09 +0000

I am having the same issue as Johan (post 543). The avahi-daemon does not seem to be starting on boot. I am on Ubuntu 9.10 server.

By: Johan

Johan — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:35:51 +0000

Having problems to load avahi-daemon on startup!(?)

I have to manually “sudo /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon” and thats not a good way to do it.

By: eldoogy

eldoogy — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 00:18:04 +0000

Hi There, I am having some trouble with netatalk and Snow Leopard (I am using the 2.0.4 build that comes with Ubuntu 9.10). Basically, It looks like something’s off when I try to delete folders that have files in them from the Mac. I keep getting the error message “The operation can’t be completed because the item … is in use.”

If I manually get into the directory and delete its contents, I can then go back and delete the outer directory with no error message.

The netatalk settings are all at default, I’ve really done nothing in either AppleVolumes.default or in afpd.conf. Still, I’d expect the defaults to function properly with OS X. Considering how many problems I’ve had with it, I’m starting to suspect netatalk is a dead-end. Is it even possible to get it to work smoothly with Snow Leopard?

Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

By: Yo Teach

Yo Teach — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 04:24:07 +0000

Unfortunately, I followed all of the instructions to the tutorial without reading the 500 other comments first. I have changed the AppleVolumes.default and afpd.conf files. However, since I have Ubuntu 9.10 and Netatalk 2.0.5 some of those changes don’t need to be made… or do they?

Could someone pleasepost what those two files should have in them with the latest and greatest versions. Muhcas Gracias!

By: Jürgen von der Laake

Jürgen von der Laake — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:34:56 +0000

Hi,
since I updated to netatalk 2.0.5, I can not login with my username/password anymore. In version 2.0.4 everything worked fine. Is in version 2.0.5 ssh still included? (like it was in 2.0.4, but not in 2.0.3)

Could somebody show me his config files, or take a look at mine (I could send via email) ?
Any help would be appreciated.
Jürgen

By: Jur

Jur — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:31:26 +0000

that’s what i’m doing all the time. I log in with the server’s username/pw.
Is it possible this is because I don’t use encryption?

By: K6Martini

K6Martini — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:30:43 +0000

It may have something to do with your settings in OSX, select your Ubuntu X-serve and click on the button in the right hand corner “Connect As” and make sure you are connecting with the user/password defined when you configured shared volumes

By: Amr

Amr — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:08:43 +0000

I launched iTunes, went to iTunes > Preferences > Advanced and changed the Media Folder Location to the “music” folder on my Ubuntu machine.

But no music shows up in the Music library in iTunes. Any ideas? Is this working for anyone?

By: Jur

Jur — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:51:36 +0000

2.0.5 is running now but I can’t login on my server from OSX. although it pops up as an xserve. When I try to connect it says username or password is invalid.

how to fix? thx in advance

By: Jur

Jur — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:54:55 +0000

Linux noob here.
could somebody explain in detail how to install and configure netatalk 2.0.5 via CLI?

I can’t get it to work because I don’t now how to compile and stuff.

By: David

David — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:56:09 +0000

This guide is great! I used it and everything works. I featured it on a blog post here if you want to see it in action: http://www.macmufasa.com/MacMufasa/Blog/Entries/2009/12/22_Make_Ubuntu_into_a_Mac_File_Server_and_Time_Machine_Backup.html

By: Juan

Juan — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:16:05 +0000

Excellent article! I’m in the process of setting up an Ubuntu 9.10 Server on my network as my File and Backup Server and was also concerned about some of the nuisances that I may come across, especially regarding TM. I didn’t want to have to plug in a USB disk to my Mac, nor did I want to keep my existing USB disk connected to my Airport Extreme Base Station. Your guide looks like it will help me achieve what I’m looking for. I have yet to do all the steps, but will be doing so in the very near future.

Thanks again!

By: Amr

Amr — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 21:52:38 +0000

I should have continued to read the tutorial and all tips to the end, I merely had to delete the .AppleDB folders and am now able to connect using AFP. Thanks so much for this!

By: Amr

Amr — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:59:20 +0000

Sorry that I keep posting back like this, but I got a step further, I edited the line in AppleVolumes.default to look like this:

/media/5d1ee8d9-c64f-424d-ae93-c7e04e46222e NetworkSpaceAFP options:usedots,upriv

Now when I go to Go > Connect to Server I can see NetworkSpaceAFP in the list of available volumes that I can mount, but when I try to mount NetworkSpaceAFP I get the Connection failed error.

Please help

By: Amr

Amr — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:46:27 +0000

p.s. I have these two lines at the end of my AppleVolumes.default file:

~/ “Home Directory”
/media/5d1ee8d9-c64f-424d-ae93-c7e04e46222e options:usedots,upriv

By: Amr

Amr — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:34:27 +0000

Hi all,

I just tried setting this up on my Ubuntu 9.10 laptop.

I have a 1TB external usb drive attached to this laptop, and I would like to share its contents using both smb (for my wife’s windows laptop) and afp (for my mac) protocols.

I have the following issue:

I can see my Ubuntu laptop in finder, it appears as a windows server, and it allows me to access the external usb drive.

If however I go to Go > Connect to Server and then select the afp protocol to connect to my Ubuntu laptop, then I can only see my /home folder on the Ubuntu machine but not the attached usb drive.

Can anyone tell me what I did wrong?

By: j

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:12:51 +0000

sudo apt-get install libcups2 libcups2-dev

By: coldslabs

coldslabs — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:02:56 +0000

I get an error copying folders to my mounted AFP drive if they contain any files or folders:
“The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50).”

1. Create a folder on the mac (NewFolder)
2. Create a folder inside the NewFolder. (e.g. NewFolder/NewFolder2)
3. Copy NewFolder to the mounted AFP volume.
I get this error: “The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -50).”

I can copy individual files, create new folders and delete items on the AFP volume successfully, but can’t copy folders over that contain any files or folders. Any one have any idea what the problem could be?

Googling the error I only get one hit which describes the problem but offers no solution:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10715528&tstart=0

By: strife25

strife25 — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:27:35 +0000

has anyone run into an issue of being unable to transfer files >4GB from the mac to the Ubuntu server?

I am running into this issue. Writing these large files from an external to the server works fine, but not from OSX.

Thanks, this is an amazing tutorial!

By: solarwind

solarwind — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:18:26 +0000

Note, for the above comment, I was referring to netatalk version 2.0.5, which supports Time Machine.

By: solarwind

solarwind — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:16:35 +0000

Can also confirm that adding the “tm” option to the /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default file makes everything work as it should – that is, no need to manually create a sparsebundle and upload it to the server.