~ Tea & Strumpets

With the release of Apple’s Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, many people will notice that Time Machine fails to play nicely with their current Netatalk servers. There is a relatively simple solution for those of us who run Netatalk servers on Linux servers and NAS devices. However, if you’re relying on a NAS-vendor such as FreeNSD, you may need to wait for them to offer an update to ensure compatibility with Mac OS X 10.7. Apparently the major reason for this break in compatibility is a lack of a “replay cache”, which was introduced in AFP 3.3.

Anyhow, below I’ve created a simple guide on how to setup Netatalk 2.2 from source on most any Linux system. I am using Gentoo in this guide, but the basics should be the same on any other system. Currently Gentoo has not merged Netatalk 2.2 into portage, so we’ll have to download the source from Netatalk itself.

Download Netatalk 2.2 (Unstable): http://netatalk.sourceforge.net

Extract the contents of the file and cd to the directory:

# tar xvf ./netatalk-2.2-beta4.tar.bz2
# cd netatalk-2.2-beta4/

To build the binaries, first run the program ./configure in the source directory. This should automatically configure Netatalk for your operating system. If you have unusual needs, then you may wish to run:

# ./configure --help

to see what special options you can enable. The most used configure options are:
The most used configure options are:

• –enable-[redhat/suse/cobalt/netbsd/fhs]
  This option helps netatalk to determine where to install the start scripts.
• –with-bdb=/path/to/bdb/installation/
  In case you installed Berkeley DB in a non-standard location, you will have to give the install location to netatalk, using this switch.

Now run configure with any options you need. For Gentoo we’ll use the following configure options:

# ./configure --enable-gentoo --enable-zeroconf

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I recently installed the developer preview of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and have been quite pleased with the update. However, apart from the AFP issue, which was quickly fixed, and the Time Machine issue, which remains unsolved, it appears that Safari 5.1 does not like self-signed certificates!

The certificate for this server is invalid. (NSURLErrorDomain:-1202)

Fortunately, there is a way to force Safari 5.1 to accept self-signed certificates. Now I know one could dump the certificate via openssl and the command line, but this method did not work for me since I am accessing my sites on an internal network and it would always dump the certificate for my default Apache virtual host. As such, the instructions below use a sort of round about method to import these certificates, but it works.

Basically these instructions show you how to use Firefox to export a self-signed SSL certificate and import it into Keychain Access. Hopefully it helps a few people out.

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Upon installing Mac OS X 10.7 Lion I discovered one niggling issue. I was unable to connect to my Gentoo Netatalk AFP server. Any connection attempts would result in the following error:

After some Googling, I discovered a quick fix to the problem. Basically, if you haven’t updated your Netatalk config file for some time, you wouldn’t have UAMS DHX2 enabled by default. To enable UAMS DHX2 support, do the following:

Edit afpd.conf:

# vi /etc/netatalk/afpd.conf

Make sure “uams_dhx2.so” is in the “-uamlist” options at the end of the file. For instance, mine looks like this:

- -noddp -transall -uamlist uams_randnum.so,uams_dhx.so,uams_dhx2.so -nosavepassword -advertise_ssh -udp

Then restart the Netatalk server. Please note that the init script may be different depending on your distribution.

# /etc/init.d/atalk restart

Now you should be able to connect your OS X 10.7 Lion installation to a Linux AFP server. It should be noted, however, that despite AFP working in this setup, I have been unable to get Time Machine to work with these settings. If you’ve managed to get Time Machine to work with Netatalk, post a comment!

After upgrading to Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5, I found that my printers no longer existed. So I went to http://localhost:631 and tried adding my Gentoo CUPS printer share like I did before, but it refused to show up in the printers list.

After some searching on the net, it seems that Apple has somewhat broken the way that it deals with Linux CUPS shares. Apparently it only searches for printers via Bounjour. In any case, I found a fix that works perfectly. Alessandro Dellavedova posted a fix for the problem over on the Apple support forums. Below is a slightly more detailed version of what he did.

WARNING: You will need administrator privileges to proceed with this fix.

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Open Print & Fax.
3. Right-click in the printer’s pane and select “Reset printing system…”
4. Open Terminal and type the following:sudo nano /etc/cups/cupsd.conf
5. Modify the first few lines such that they look similar to the following:Browsing On
   BrowseOrder allow,deny
   BrowseAllow all
   BrowseProtocols all
   BrowseRemoteProtocols all
   BrowsePoll <Your CUPS Server domain or IP>:631
   BrowsePort 631
6. Save the file
7. Restart the printing subsystem by typing in the following:sudo killall -HUP cupsd

Now you should be able to see and add the printers on your Linux share.

It seems that the developers at Flagship Industries have finally posted a fix to their Ventrilo client for Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard. You know, the bug fix that takes all of 5-minutes to correct. However, they only fixed the problem in the main window and nowhere else.

Here’s what they had to say:

It is intended to solve the user list window being empty after connecting when running OSX 10.5. This is the only change. The same problem also occurred in a few other windows as well.

If you are not running OSX 10.5 then don’t waste your time downloading it as there is no advantage.

This is an interim update until we release the next major upgrade here soon.

FYI,
Flag

__________________
Flagship Industries, Inc.
www.ventrilo.com

Certainly doesn’t sound like he was very happy about making this fix. In any case, if you would like to download their new version, you can find it here.

Otherwise, if you want the fully patched version, you can still access it from my site.

As I have promised upon the release of Mac OS X 10.5, here is a patched version of Ventrilo for all us Mac users to download and enjoy!

This version actually works and took me all of 10-minutes to fix. I have posted instructions for the Ventrilo developers in the past on how to fix this problem, but instead they prefer to threaten me with legal action.

Download: <Link Removed>

EDIT: You should probably download and install Ventrilo first, as I am unsure as to whether it installs anything to other locations on the drive.

Simply delete the original install and move my patched version over to the applications folder afterwards.

Enjoy!

Well now, this bug has existed with Ventrilo for over a year on OS X 10.5. But guess what? I fixed it! Yes, I spent about an hour tooling around with the package contents of Ventrilo.app and found main.nib. I then opened this file in Interface Builder (part of Xcode) and did a little trial and error editing. Throughout this process I discovered the problem, fixed it and have tested the results. Everything works fine. I didn’t go much deeper than the main channel list, but I am sure this problem exists in other spots within the application. However, with the problem identified, it should be rather simple to fix in the future. I’m surprised that one of Ventrilo’s valuable developers couldn’t spare the 5 or 10 minutes needed to fix this problem… That is, spare 5 or 10-minutes over the past bloody year in which this bug has been known on Leopard Beta. In any case, I offer the solution to everyone!

Since the Ventrilo.app file that you install is read only, you will need to copy the application to a different directory. On the copy, right click on the application and select “Show package contents”. Navigate to the English.lprog folder and replace the main.nib file with the one I have linked above. Enjoy being able to run Ventrilo on OS X 10.5 guys!

UPDATE: If you are looking for the patched version of Ventrilo, see this post.

UPDATE #2: A person, who’s comment I lost, posted a simple shell script on how to make the change in all offending portions of the program.

su root **You will need password to your machine**
cd /Applications/Ventrilo.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/main.nib
cp objects.xib objects.xib.old
cat objects.xib | sed 's/rowHeight">0</rowHeight">20</g' > objects.xib.new
rm objects.xib
cp objects.xib.new objects.xib

Restart Ventrilo!

Well, I finally decided to upgrade my old Power Macintosh G4 (Quicksilver 2002) with a new server. Much like the old server, the new one is running Gentoo, however, the new server is an Intel box that was supplied by my father for free. Beggars can’t be choosers, eh?

Old Server:
CPU: PowerPC 7455
CPU Speed: 933 MHz
Memory: 1.0 GB
Storage: ~600 GB

New Server:
CPU: Intel Pentium 4
CPU Speed: 2.80 GHz
Memory: 3.0 GB
Storage: 2 TB

As much as I hate to switch to an ugly PC box, it is only for server use. That is, basically the new ugly black box is my mail/web/music/file server. Hopefully, now that it is all set up, I’ll actually get around to posting random nonsense into this blog.