All my home machines are Macs now, except for the file server in my basement, which is a Debian box.

Previously, I had Samba installed on it so I could store some files from my other machines remotely. But using Windows file sharing between Macs and Linux just seemed wrong.

Here’s a very quick guide on how to get Apple file-sharing going on your Debian box, and how to make that server show up automatically in your Mac’s Finder. These instructions are specific to Debian (i.e. packages, paths, etc.), but should be easily modified to work on other flavours of Linux.

Disclaimer

This guide was written mostly from memory, and with a get-it-up-now-and-edit-it-later mentality. If you notice anything wrong with the instructions, or something isn’t working, let me know and I’ll edit the guide where appropriate.

Install the Required Packages

On your Debian box, you will need to install some packages. First, however you will need to add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://interreality.org/software/debian unstable main

More on that later.

Now, run apt-get update and then install the following packages (and their dependencies):

• netatalk
• howl-tools
• mdnsresponder

Netatalk is “a freely-available, kernel level implementation of the AppleTalk Protocol Suite, originally for BSD-derived systems.” It will provide the file-sharing functionality (like Samba did).

Howl is “a cross-platform implementation of Zeroconf networking.” It will allow your Mac to automatically discover the Netatalk file server. Howl isn’t part of the main Debian package system, which is why you needed to add that extra line to the sources file.

If asked, just accept the default configuration options for now.

Configure Netatalk

First, we need to enable AFP-over-TCP, which is how Apple file sharing works in OS X. Netatalk comes with some other daemons which we don’t really need: ATALKD to handle Appletalk (required for OS 9 and earlier, I think), TIMELORD, to serve time, a la ntpdate, and PAPD: an Appletalk printer daemon. Like I said, my Mac experience started with Jaguar, so I don’t really any of those. To disable them, you need to edit /etc/default/netatalk. Make sure the following options are set:

ATALKD_RUN=no
PAPD_RUN=no
AFPD_RUN=yes
TIMELORD_RUN=no

We’re basically turning everything off except the AFP daemon.

Second, we need to specify the location of our shared directories. These are defined in /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default. There are lots of configuration options in there. The default set up has this configuration line:

~/     "Home Directory"

This will share the home directory of whatever user logs in.

Note: because of the way Netatalk handles filename conversion between Mac and Linux, on my system I set up a separate directory for shared files, and another for the database and other control files Netatalk uses. The end result is my home directory isn’t as cluttered. My AppleVolumes.default looks like this (all one line):

var/local/shares/cmv/     "AFP Share"     allow:cmv <font class="lf">¬</font>
    dbpath:/var/local/shares-db/cmv options:noadouble,nohex

Looking at the manpage for AppleVolumes.default describes all those options.

Finally, do a /etc/init.d/netatalk restart to get it all running.

Take a Quick Reality Check

At this point, you should have a working AFP file server. You can test by trying Finder › Go › Connect to server… and entering afp://servername/ as the server address.

If that doesn’t work, then something is wrong with your Netatalk configuration (check the logs), or maybe your internal network isn’t allowing the traffic. Make sure TCP ports 548 and 427, and UDP ports 548 and 5353 are open between your file server and the Mac (UDP 5353 is actually for Rendezvous/Zeroconf, which we’ll configure next).

Configure Howl

Now, all that’s left is to set up Rendezvous (a.k.a. Zeroconf) on the file server, so your AFP share is automatically displayed in the Finder.

Create the file /etc/howl/mDNSResponder.conf (if it doesn’t exist) with the following line:

MyServer     _afpovertcp._tcp     local.     548

Feel free to change “MyServer” to something more descriptive; that is the text that will appear in the Finder.

What this is saying is that Howl should publish via Rendezvous the service called “MyServer”, which uses the “afpovertcp” service over TCP, on the local netblock, and that this service runs on port 548. If you have sshd running on the same machine, you can add this line too:

MyServer     _ssh._tcp     local.     22

Do a /etc/init.d/mdnsresponder restart to get it all running.

To test it, try running mDNSBrowse _afpovertcp._tcp from the command line on the file server. You should see something like:

browse reply: Add Service MyServer _afpovertcp._tcp. local.
resolve reply: MyServer _afpovertcp._tcp. local. 192.168.0.1 548

Final Test

On your Mac, go to Finder › Go › Network and click on the Local folder. Voilà, you should see an icon for your Debian file server. If you added the ssh configuration line above, you can also launch Terminal.app and try File › Connect to server…, then select the Secure Shell (ssh) service. Your Debian machine should show up in the list of servers.