Netatalk authentication gotchas and diagnostic steps for Ubuntu 10.04

For some reason the netatalk package that is in the Ubuntu repository doesn’t come with any password authentication packages. So unless you want a fully non password appletalk setup on your Ubuntu server. DO NOT apt-get install netatalk!

I followed Mr. Kretschmann’s handy HowTo for installing Netatalk on Ubuntu. It seems to work for Ubuntu 10.04 (actually it should work with all linux distributions). However when I try login, I kept getting unknown username / password problem.

Here are my installation steps:

Here are my diagnostic steps:

1. Check your afpd.conf and AppleVolumes.default files for any typos, especially when you are cutting and pasting!
2. If you want to let each user to access his/her own directory, you should put

   1	~/ "$u" allow:$u cnidscheme:cdb

   in AppleVolumes.default; $u is the variable for username; instead of username1/username2 combination as listed in the HowTo. The list of variable names is in the comment section of the file or here.

3. Open Log File Viewer under System -> Administration. What this does is whenever there is any updates in any of the log files, the updated log file on the left will appear bold.
4. What I encountered was my installation steps above only created the uams_dhx2*.so authentication libraries. My syslog file has these entries

   1 2 3 4 5 6

   afpd[17919]: ASIP started on 192.168.168.121:548(5) (2.0.5) afpd[17919]: uam: loading (/usr/lib/netatalk/uams_randnum.so) afpd[17919]: uam: uam not found (status=-1) afpd[17919]: uam: loading (/usr/lib/netatalk/uams_dhx.so) afpd[17919]: uam: uam not found (status=-1) afpd[17919]: Finished parsing Config File

5. Go to /usr/lib/netatalk directory and verify which authentication modules you have. Update your afpd.conf appropriately. Mine is:

   1	- -transall -uamlist uams_dhx2.so -savepassword -advertise_ssh

   dhx2 authentication is only supported by MacOSX machines, if you have OS9 or earlier you will have to have the others fall back to. I think it is much easier to use a normal MacOSX machine to do Appletalk though.

6. I also noticed in with Netatalk 2.0.5 (vs 2.0.3 in the HowTo), there is a Time Machine support option in the AppleVolumes.default file. So an entry like this:

   1	~/TimeMachine "$u" allow:$u cnidscheme:cdb options:usedots,upriv,tm

   would allow a per user login to have their own TimeMachine backup. or you can do it by ip via the $c variable. With that option enabled, I can run TimeMachine without having to create my own sparsebundle etc. You still have to issue the Defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1 command in a terminal of the Mac you want to start TimeMachine though.

7. Oh after each change, remember to run:

   1 2	/etc/init.d/netatalk stop /etc/init.d/netatalk start

   I find 2 commands work better than one command using the restart flag.