[OpenAFS] Creating an AFP Gateway to AFS with Mac OS X

[Bart Loeb]

Hello All.

My thanks to the Open source movement that I am even able to write this
email, to even consider that such a group would exist, that something like
this may be possible.

Here's the situation. The Univ. of Notre Dame is wanting to replace some
very old Sun Solaris hardware that is running a very old version of netatalk
to allow classic Mac OS 9 and earlier clients connect to AFS through their
choosers. We have four translators that use this method.

My desire is to replace the Sun boxes with one or two Mac OS X servers
connecting to AFS through the Open Afs client and providing the same
functionality to Mac OS 9 and earlier clients that the Sun boxes did.

Notre Dame supports a home directory and institutional file space for our
users in AFS. So when a user picks a netatalk translator in the Chooser, he
gives his afs-id and password, which then netatalk presents these two shares
to the user as AFP (Apple File Protocol, ie Appletalk) volumes.

Since Mac OS X speaks AFP natively, would it be possible to eliminate the
netatalk part of the equation, bind a Mac OS X server to afs for
authentication and file services, and present the user running the older
version of Mac OS the fileshares that the user expects? Perhaps even with
much greater speed and reliability than the translators could offer?

My expertise is in the classic Mac OS world. I am learning unix, and working
hard to gain knowledge on the inner workings of Mac OS X and Mac OS X
server. At the recommendation of one of my coworkers, I am starting this
project with an inquiry to all of you.

Have any of you tried anything like the above scenario? Where do I start on
this? My initial thought would be the following:

    1. On Mac OS X Server, install Open Afs

    2. Bind authentication on the Mac OS X server to Kerberos or our Sun
       Netinfo, /etc side. (Yes, I need help here, as I am unsure of even
       how to properly frame the question, let alone where to start on the
       binding).

    3. Configure the Server to provide the correct afs shares when clients
       connect to it for file services.

Number 1 seems easy, I have an OS X server already running. I am looking for
help and advice on the rest of this setup. Anything you may be able to offer
will be greatly appreciated and mentioned in all documentation related to
this project. 


thanks for reading this, and anything you may offer,


Bart


--------------------------------------------------------------
Bart Loeb, Senior Systems Engineer, OIT, ND
http://www.nd.edu/~bloeb

"Despite all my rage, i am still just a rat in a cage..."
    - smashing pumpkins