Netatalk/AFP 3.1.11 for Debian 9 on armel (kirkwood) devices

Hi All,

Debian 8 and 9 ship old versions of netatalk (2.x series) which do not work well with modern versions of macOS / OSX, particularly for Timemachine backups.

The netatalk 3 series fixes these issues, so I've created .debs for armel devices, using these instructions;
Build netatalk debs from github

If you want to build the .debs yourself the instructions are missing a few dependencies (git, fakeroot, licensecheck, devscripts) and I wasn't able to connect to git hub with https from my kirkwood box.

You can ignore the git certificate errors with;

env GIT_SSL_NO_VERIFY=true git clone https://github.com/adiknoth/netatalk-debian

To just get the compiled .debs they are here;
Netatalk debs

The dev debs are not strictly required, to just get netatalk / AFP running install;
libatalk18_3.1.11-1_armel.deb
netatalk_3.1.11-1_armel.deb

Cheers,
Jeremy

Hi Jeremy,

Cool! I had netatalk/AFP installed on all my boxes from way back. But back then I found the Time Machine server performance was not great. So I don't use it, eventhough it is always runinng (just in case I need it).

Have you done any test restore with your setup for netatalk 3 series?

-bodhi
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Hey Bodhi,

I'm doing a 650gb TImemachine backup to my Goflex Home now (the first backup to this new box) and throughput in the mac's activity monitor hovers between 8MB and 21MB per second. NFS is around 50MB a second to the Goflex and 60MB a second to my Lenovo IX2-DL.

So it certainly doesn't seem fast. Timemachine itself could be the issue though, once the backup is complete I'll do some file copy operations and see what throughput is like.

That said, the Timemachine function works 100% with netatalk 3 and TM is really the only thing anyone uses AFP for anymore. Maybe give it another try.

Thanks! I’ve added it to the Wiki thread.

-bodhi
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Some performance stats of my iMac connecting to my Goflex Home via gigabit ethernet via AFP and SMB.

Stats gathered by averaging 3 runs of 'Lan Speed Test' per protocol.

Goflex Home, Debian Stretch, netatalk 3.1.11.
AFP: Average write speed 30.45 MBps. Average read speed 68.73 MBps.
SMB: Average write 29.2 MBps. Average read 63.16 MBps.

For comparison here are the speeds of my Intel NUC server, Ubuntu 18.04 also running netatalk 3.1.11.
AFP: Average write speed 76.05 MBps. Average read speed 42.37 MBps. (odd result
SMB: Average write 31.33 MBps. Average read 66.47 MBps.

Your mileage may vary, and faster kirkwood boxes will do better as the Goflex results appear memory bound (memory maxes out when doing long transfers), however macOS clients do appear to still prefer AFP and the kirkwood performance is acceptable, particularly for reads.

NFS would likely be better than SMB I'll have to figure out how to move all my macs to NFS, apart from Timemachine backups.

Jeremy,

> Goflex Home, Debian Stretch, netatalk
> 3.1.11.
> AFP: Average write speed 30.45 MBps. Average read
> speed 68.73 MBps.
> SMB: Average write 29.2 MBps. Average read 63.16
> MBps.

That's a decent speed these low power Kirkwood plugs!

> Your mileage may vary, and faster kirkwood boxes
> will do better as the Goflex results appear memory
> bound (memory maxes out when doing long
> transfers), however macOS clients do appear to
> still prefer AFP and the kirkwood performance is
> acceptable, particularly for reads.

The Dreamplug would be a better plug for this with 512MB RAM, and costs the same or less than the GoFlex Net. If you still can find it.

-bodhi
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