At 12/29/99 11:26 AM, Bob James ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>First, is there a good resource (online or otherwise) where a NetWare
>admin and Linux newbie-admin can read up on Apple networking
>structure? I need to understand how addresses are determined, arranged
>and assigned.
Regarding address-assignment, you might try the Guide to AppleTalk
Routing starting at <http://tns.utk.edu/tech/apple/atroute1.html>,
particularly chapter 2. For more detailed information, there's the
AppleTalk protocol spec (Inside AppleTalk,
<http://developer.apple.com/macos/opentransport/docs_dev.html>), but that
might be too dense for what you need.
>The server which held most of the Mac material was an aging Compaq
>SystemPro LT (486, 40M RAM) which is being forcibly retired due to Y2K.
>I opted to move all the Mac files to Linux because
>of the lower overhead, and anyone out there who's supporting AppleTalk
>and Mac namespace on a NetWare box knows what I'm talking about. The
>problem is that the older machine was the one that dictated the
>addresses for the AppleTalk portion of the network. I want the Linux
>machine to do that now. In the atalk.conf file, I placed this line:
>
>eth0 -phase 2 -addr 5001.110 -net 5001-5003 -zone "Joiner"
>
>which mirrored the setup from the old NetWare box. However, when I try
>to start the service, the server reported that it could not register
>the addresses.
If netatalk thinks it's just another node on the AppleTalk network, it
will take the settings in atalkd.conf as suggestions rather than orders,
since AppleTalk dynamically assigns machine addresses based on the cable
ranges (net ranges) and zone information provided by some authority on
the network (a router or [in your case] a server). Your Compaq system
was seeding the network with this information, so you have to tell
netatalk to take over that role by acting as a seed router.
Which netatalk configuration toggle you need to use to do this will
depend on your network setup. If, as I think you are saying, you only
have one interface (NIC) off that box which has AppleTalk running on it,
you should add -router (the so-called "single-interface routing" switch)
to the config line quoted above. If, however, you have more than one
interface with AppleTalk, use -seed (instead of -router) on each
interface that doesn't have a seed router; also be aware that the
netatalk box will route AppleTalk packets between all interfaces listed
in atalkd.conf (-dontroute will get around this, but I'm not sure if you
can seed a segment marked -dontroute).
Note that you need a fairly recent version of netatalk, pre-asun2.1.4, in
order to get -router and -dontroute.
<ftp://ftp.cobaltnet.com/pub/users/asun/testing/pre-asun2.1.4-36a.tar.gz>
>I removed the line, but it still failed, this time due
>to the fact that the machine has two NICs, and one of the segments
>does not have Appletalk running on it. So I placed just eth0 in the
>atalkd.conf, and it worked, but with an address of 65280/70. How is it
>arriving at that address, and why can't I stipulate the address range?
65280-65534 is the startup range. When an AppleTalk-speaking machine
starts up, it randomly assigns itself a temporary address in the startup
range until it can obtain cable range and zone information from a seed
router. If it can't find a seed router, it just keeps the temporary
address.
--Benjamin Gilbert
