Mac user needs help setting up a Linux file-server (netatalk?)

smells_of_elderberries · 03-26-2013, 05:24 PM

Are there any Mac users here that can help me set up a file-server on Debian 6.0.7? I think Netatalk would be ideal but there are always hurdles in the tutorials I find that I can't get past.

Ta

lleb · 03-26-2013, 05:44 PM

if you are using MACs as workstations and want to run Linux as a file server, then setup a NFS server. really matters not what flavor of Linux you use, but for longevity I would suggest CentOS as it is a rough fork of RHE thus it will have a 5 year life cycle vs Debians 18-24mo life cycle.

The largest issues with OSx and Linux NFS is that OSx does not fully support NFSv4 and you have to run NFSv3 with the insecure flag in your exports:

Code:

[ray@centos ~]$ cat /etc/exports 
#
#	/etc/exports

#	NFS4
/exports *(rw,insecure,subtree_check,crossmnt,fsid=0)
#/exports/NFS_TV_Shows *(rw,insecure,subtree_check,crossmnt,fsid=0)

#	NFSv3
/exports/centos/public *(rw,insecure,no_subtree_check,fsid=3010)

Note the insecure for NFSv3 above. that is exclusively for my Mac's that I have around the house.

smells_of_elderberries · 03-27-2013, 05:15 AM

Hi,

I would use NFS but as you say, v4 is buggy on OS X and v3 dynamically allocates ports for certain services, making it difficult to punch a hole in a firewall for access. I'm researching the latter but it's a little beyond me. Netatalk would be ideal, if I could get it working.

Thanks though.

smells_of_elderberries · 03-28-2013, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lleb

if you are using MACs as workstations and want to run Linux as a file server, then setup a NFS server. […]
Note the insecure for NFSv3 above. that is exclusively for my Mac's that I have around the house.

What speeds do you get when transferring files to/from the server over NFSv3? I used time cp to copy a file to the Linux server from my Mac mini over an all-Gigabit LAN network during a low-traffic period, and got 12.2MB/s. That's incredibly slow given the infrastructure. Is that all I can expect?

lleb · 03-28-2013, 04:31 PM

to answer both of your questions, i have zero performance issues when transferring files between OSx and Linux via NFS. The bottle neck could be your HDDs so Id check there first.

As for the random ports, you can configured NFS to use static ports so that is not an issue.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/centos-...-server-ports/

is a good start on setting NFS to run on static ports.

smells_of_elderberries · 04-02-2013, 06:33 PM

Quote:

The bottle neck could be your HDDs so Id check there first.

I ran a comparison between using scp and NFS to transfer files under identical conditions, and it showed scp to be considerably faster.

What else could it be?