Connect Mac OS X to Linux server 1

[dodge20]

We are running a Linux Red Hat server and are having problems with our os 10.3 machines staying connected to the server. It seems if there is no internet or server activity for about 20 minutes, the mac disconnects itself from the server automatically. Our OS 9 machines and don't have any problems.

Is anyone aware of an issue between linux and Mac OSX or have any informationon this? Does the connection need to be AFP or SMB? Right now I use afp. Any help is greatly appreciated as we are going to upgrade all of our Macs.



Dodge20

 

[ericbrunson]

First, I assume you're mounting a volume from the RH server on the mac, right? Second, you need to know what service on the RH is being utilized to do the mount. I don't think RH does AFP out of the box, SMB and NFS are far more common, did you install something 3rd party like netatalk to allow AFP mounts?

 

[dodge20]

Thanks, yes I was mounting the volume from the server to the Mac. I guess I just assumed it was using smb, but I am not sure which this uses. How can I find out? I know we have some sort of atalk installed, but not sure on that either. As you can probably tell Linux isn't my strong point.

I was also doing some more research and came across something called cifs. Isn't this what windows uses? Would this be a possible solution? So I would connect as cifs://ipaddress

Dodge20

 

[dodge20]

Ok, I think it is safe to assume it is smb and not nfs. It wouldn't let me connect via nfs. I also tried the cifs and that worked the same as the smb. I also think this will stay connected using smb as opposed to afp.

The problem now is that we can't open files off of the server that run a classic(Mac OS 9.2) program such as Quark Xpress 4.1. Is there a way to have the smb see both OSX and OS 9.2 at the same time? Currently on our OS X machines we have OS 9.2 running also so we can still use our older programs.

I am pretty sure our 9.2 machines are running atalk because sometimes they drop the server and I have to run this script:

service atalk stop
cnid_maint
service atalk start

This brings back the share on the 9.2 machines. This is rare that I have to do this though

Dodge20

 

[ericbrunson]

There's not two paths to take:

1) Figure out why AFP is timing out (I never had a problem with it, but that was 7 years ago)

2) Fix SMB with the classic apps. I would take a first guess that this is a locking problem.

If you want to go the first way, I'd suggest making sure you have the latest atalk installed.

I think the second path would be the most fruitful, as samba is better supported and more prevalent than atalk. If you want answers there, you may think about posting to the samba forum.

Sorry I can't be more help.

 

[dodge20]

Thanks for your help eric.

I want to go the SMB route. Maybe I will just have to have some extra machines running just os 9.2 and quark on them. I think the problem could be solved if I had more of a budget to upgrade all the software so it is OS X compatible, but I don't think that is going to happen.

Dodge20