Samba And Netatalk - Is There A Better Solution?

Traverser asks: "I'm looking for a solution that allows Windows and Apple users to share a file store. Samba works great for the Windows systems. Netatalk works great for the Apple users. But each solution has its own style of file locking on the server: which means that if the same file were opened under Netatalk and Samba at the same time, there is a chance the file would become corrupt and unusable. Putting Dave on the Macintosh provided further layers of troubles. The WindowsNT AppleTalk driver doesn't seem to like Netatalk. WebDAV seems like a good alternative, except the tools are not mature enough on the Macintosh side to put in a production enviorment. NFS seems like a better solution, except the price per client suggests moving towards a commercial solution. Novell has moved support of the Netware Macintosh client to ProSoft Engineering. The current Novell client is still buggy and there is no visible development for a new client. I hate to say it but I'm back to the Microsoft solution. I really hope I'm missing something..."

Comments

AFS

[jfunk]

AFS + Netatalk is used in many places. You can compile Netatalk with AFS support.

I haven't tried it but it is described here.

There are also AFS clients for Windows, and Samba is supposedly "AFS-Aware."

It's worth a shot.

Re:AFS

[mattdm]

AFS isn't trivial to set up and maintain. It's very cool, though. For those interested, check out OpenAFS, based on an open source fork of the IBM/Transarc codebase, and Arla, a completely from scratch open source implementation.

The Arla client works very well, but I don't think the server is considered stable. I'm not sure about the server side of OpenAFS either.

--

Samba and Netatalk (or DAVE!)

[RapaNui]

Stay away from DAVE! It is *not* very well behaved, sometimes.
I'm also interested in alternatives, because I will shortly be implementing a system for batch image processing in a production environment, and it will need to talk to a whole bunch of Macs, and one Windoz PC.
I haven't looked too closely at the file locking side of things, because I've been concentrating on network performance (throughput)
Interesting thought on the above - Appleshare over IP - throughput is faster, but is glacially slow in listing directory contents, yet over Appletalk directory listing is an order of magnitude faster - go figure!

Helios

[GuyStein]

For a commercial implementation that really pays back I would recommend Helios EtherShare and PCshare. It runs very fast on Linux and can also handle huge files for transfers. It's one of the fastest or the fastest available solutions and very widely used in the graphics arts industry.

OK, the price tag is pretty high, but if it is for commercial duties where it pays back it's certainly worth checking out.

There's a very good article written by Jeff Wall on the subj of file sharing in connection with Macs. He compares different server side software on different architectures, including Linux, Winducks, Solaris, MacOS, and I believe AIX, Irix, and *BSD as well. Search the web for the article and decide which might be best for you.

For high duty Helios is great (just compare the numbers!), for average duty you will be probably best off using some open source stuff.

Guy

Re:Helios

[phutureboy]

I second this. I have worked with quite a few Appleshare server products under Unix, VMS, NT and OS/2, and Helios kicked ass over all others. It is quite pricy though.

Incidentally, I don't know if anyone here has mentioned this but the netatalk project has recently been revived after years of stagnating at 1.4b2+asun. They're working on a 1.5 release - it's worth checking out to see if the Samba locking problem is fixed. I know that is an often-requested feature. See sourceforge.net/projects/netatalk

Some other *nix Appleshare solutions include PacerShare (forget what its called now - someone bought them i think), uShare, Syntax and CAP.

--

Samba on Linux or ?

[Gothmolly]

Samba has support for "kernel level oplocks" on both Linux and (I think) IRIX. This allows the OS to enforce locks, even in a multi-server setup like you describe.

Mac OS X...

[GoodDoug]

If you are willing to upgrade to MacOS X for the clients, netatalk (as it stands now) won't be able to work with them. However, NFS is natively supported by Mac OS X clients. Netatalk for Mac OS 9 and earlier, Samba for Win clients, and NFS for everyone else...

When Mac OS X server comes out, it will natively host AFP, Samba, NFS, FTP and WebDAV out of the box. http://www.apple.com/macosx/server/

Use a single platform

[wfrp01]

Ditch the Macs. Or ditch the PC's. There aren't any applications in any category (CAD might require PC's) that can't be found on both platforms. Tell the OS bigots in your office to take a hike, and _really_ solve your problem.

File sharing is only the beginning. Then you have to worry about font matching. And document conversion. And printing. Ad nauseum.

The problem here is not file sharing. It's OS bigotry. Supporting two disparate platforms that can both do the same thing is nothing but extra work and an aggravation. Your job is to support the mission of your company, not to molly coddle individual computer users and all of their predjudices and phobias. Solve that problem and you'll be all set.

Whatever you do, make sure you garner the support of management, though. Who, I understand, are often the ones causing problems in the first place. Sigh.