68kMLA Classic Interface

This is a version of the 68kMLA forums for viewing on your favorite old mac. Visitors on modern platforms may prefer the main site.

Click here to select a new forum.
Fun with userspace AppleTalk
Posted by: Bolacore on 2026-02-11 09:37:20 I didn’t see one called that, but I did try turning off a bunch of extensions including one called Foreign File Exchange. Now the PHOTO_CD request is gone which is good, but Mac OS still locks up so seems like that was a red herring. Definitely think it’s some rogue extension now
Posted by: NJRoadfan on 2026-02-11 09:40:02 The malformed packets may be a problem... or not. Gotta love the lack of error handling in classic MacOS though. When trying to root out bugs in Netatalk, I've found it helpful to do packet traces using one of Apple's AFP servers to see how the communication should progress. The built-in file sharing in System 7+ should be fine for this. I also have a wide variety of clients on hand since they have their fair share of bugs too. For example, ASC 3.7.x has some quirks in its DSI implementation.
Posted by: Bolacore on 2026-02-11 09:41:42 At this point I dont _think_ I have any malformed ones left. The only one I am unsure about is FPGetSrvrMsg - Even though that should only be in AFP 2.1 and I am only advertising AFP2.0 and under it still seems to send it. Wireshark seems happy about what I am sending, though. But yes I think you're right - I have a B&W G3 desktop I should fire up and just capture the conversation between the two to see what I might be doing wrong
Posted by: NJRoadfan on 2026-02-11 09:53:50 Just as long as its running OS 9. AFP 3.0 has a ton of changes that could complicate things in a trace with an older client.
Posted by: Bolacore on 2026-02-11 15:27:32 Just tried booting Mac OS 9.2 on the PowerBook and it gets much farther, before exploding because I have yet to implement the rest of the directory bitmap types 😅 But that seems to confirm at least that on a clean setup it doesn't stall at the FPGetSrvrMsg call.
Posted by: Bolacore on 2026-02-15 15:21:07 Success! After implementing far more AFP commands than I ever thought I'd need to, I have Linux to Mac OS file copying working with AFP 2.0 via EtherTalk (and indirectly to LocalTalk clients via an Asante). Of course have to get my favourite Rust crab copied first, and using it to copy a load of extra software now too. So pleased to see it working. Now just to get the other direction working which I _think_ just needs a few more commands and I'll have a pretty basic daemon working that supports AFP and PAP. Afterwards I'll be adding support for it directly using TashTalk, and getting this published for others to start toying with,
Posted by: Bolacore on 2026-02-17 07:59:57 Hm interestingly on long file transfers I’m seeing my PowerBook just hard lock again. Gets about 30MiB in to a file copy then just halts network activity and everything stops responding on it (no mouse or anything). Following the capture does not reveal anything interesting it just randomly stops sending FPRead commands, an it happens anywhere from a few megs in to 50. I’m starting to wonder now if my test machine has bad RAM? Maybe that explains all the really odd crashes I’ve had during testing. Will post a capture here later on if anyone could double check my findings.
Posted by: adespoton on 2026-02-17 15:58:10 Hm interestingly on long file transfers I’m seeing my PowerBook just hard lock again. Gets about 30MiB in to a file copy then just halts network activity and everything stops responding on it (no mouse or anything). Following the capture does not reveal anything interesting it just randomly stops sending FPRead commands, an it happens anywhere from a few megs in to 50. I’m starting to wonder now if my test machine has bad RAM? Maybe that explains all the really odd crashes I’ve had during testing. Will post a capture here later on if anyone could double check my findings. Since it's a PowerBook, what are your energy saver settings? Is it trying to go to sleep, disrupting network connections (but not actually going to sleep)?
< 2