AFP Share Auxiliary Parameters

[Joeman3000]

Not sure how popular AFP is with FreeNAS, but I am in the process of getting Macs working in our heterogeneous environment of Windows and Mac based computers. I thought it would be a good idea to try and draw some attention to it here on the forums.

I noticed there isn't an Auxiliary Parameters box in the individual share configuration panes like it is for the Samba shares. From reading the documentation on the Netatalk config, it follows the same format as Samba does. As far as I know, any manual modifications to the config files directly will be wiped on reconfiguration.

It would be great to have better control over the individual AFP shares. Some parameters I am eyeing are "vol size limit" and "veto files". I'm sure there are other parameters that would be nice to use as well.

I posted a feature request here too: https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/10367

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I am in the process of getting Macs working in our heterogeneous environment of Windows and Mac based computers

You might be better off using CIFS for everything in a heterogeneous environment. It has been widely reported that Apple has deprecated AFP in favor of CIFS, although the original PDF that several articles link to seems to be missing.

 

[Joeman3000]

I plan on using Time Machine for the 2 Macs we have, but I predict it will eat up all our file server's disk space after a while. Other than that we are using CIFS for our file sharing. The "vol size limit" parameter would be paramount for keeping the backups under control, if what I think is going to happen. I'm still in the testing phase with Time Machine, so I'm not 100% sure how it works yet. I like this feature because it integrates will with Mac OS X as opposed to other methods.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I plan on using Time Machine for the 2 Macs we have

I hope that works out for you. My experience with Time Machine over AFP was disappointing. I ended up switching to Arq Backup.

 

[Joeman3000]

My experience with Time Machine over AFP was disappointing.

Do you remember what the problems you had with Time Machine and AFP? So far, I have had success with a system restore via Time Machine and rolling back deleted files and app. I'm sure as you know, with testing any new technology, unforeseen problems crop up when you put it into production. :)

 

[RcNorth]

I have a completely MAC house with the exception of one Windows laptop and the FreeNAS Server. Currently all my shares are setup as AFP. I am constantly losing connections and TimeMachine needs to restart the backup from scratch about once every 2 weeks. My wife's laptop hasn't had a backup in several weeks now (all important stuff is in Dropbox or Google Drive).

I am not sure if the problem is my DNS config or with the Macs themselves. All are running Yosemite (10.10).

I did find this article talking about Apple moving away from ARP.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13...fp-file-sharing-to-smb2-in-os-x-109-mavericks

I'm going to move the shares over to CIFS for a couple of them and see how that works out.

I'm still trying to determine a good backup plan. I think all the important data is already in the cloud. It is mainly the computer setup that I want to backup now.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Do you remember what the problems you had with Time Machine and AFP?

Yes, it was the widely reported "sparsebundle is already in use" error, which is not limited to FreeNAS. You can always work around it, but I want my backups to 'just work', so I stopped using it. I think Time Machine is wonderful for directly connected drives, but it seems to me to be less than 100% solid over AFP. Other forum members continue to use it so YMMV.

I switched to Arq Backup (no affiliation), which has been very solid.

 

[RcNorth]

I have the sparse bundle already in use once in a while, but not often. My main problem is that the Macs don't see the FreeNAS shared, which is why I'm thinking it might be DNS.