[OpenAFS] AFS and Macintosh

[Patrick J. LoPresti]

(I apologize if you get this message twice; it did not appear to go
through to info-afs the first time.)


We are considering deploying AFS at our organization.  In addition to
Linux, Solaris, and Windows clients, we have to worry about Macs;
specifically, MacOS 8.5, 9, and (soon) X.

We can probably wait for the native OpenAFS client for OS X to
stabilize.  But we need to support MacOS 8.5 and 9 right away.

I have searched the info-afs and netatalk-admins archives.  I have
browsed the UMich RSUG pages.  I have stumbled onto AuthMan and the
AuthMan UAM:

  http://www.umich.edu/~rsug/authman/

...but some messages from the netatalk-admins archive suggest that
AuthMan may not work with OS 8.5 and higher.

I see a link to a slightly different version of the same tools at this
URL:

  http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/mackerb.html

However, I am not even sure AuthMan/AuthMan UAM are what I need.

So my question is this: What is the best way to provide access to AFS
for Macs?  What software do I need, and where should I obtain it?  Is
the 1.5 prerelease of netatalk at http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/
suitable?

What do most organizations with AFS and Macs do?

(Note: In our environment, we do not particularly mind sending
cleartext passwords over the network.  And we do not care about any
services except AFS.  So Kerberos on Mac is not a requirement; a
version of netatalk which simply used the cleartext password to get
AFS tokens would be fine.)

Thanks.

 - Pat