Earth Computing

[Alvin]

On Thursday 28 January 2010 11:58:31 Etienne Goyer wrote:
> Ante Karamatić wrote:
> > On 15.12.2009 13:40, Alvin wrote:
> >>    - Helios, A commercial application to provide file and print sharing
> >>    for
> >> 
> >> Macintosh.
> > 
> > Is there something wrong with netatalk? It's an open source application
> > that provides file and print sharing. For OSX, AFP is deprecated anyway
> > (and printing works much better with CUPS, which is owned by Apple).
> 
> Indeed, modern MacOS actually speaks CIFS, so Samba is all you need.
> netatalk is only really useful when speaking to ancient Mac, it is
> somewhat obsolete these days.

I told the samba server to deny access to macintosh due to a multitude of 
problems. MacOS does speak CIFS, and netatalk has probably evolved since I 
last tested it, but there are different reasons here to choose Helios:

- The product has been proven to be reliable
- Searches are a lot faster (last time I checked).
- CIFS is not an option for Mac in some environments. Have you tried it? 
Resource forks will get lost and Mac users will see files that aren't there or 
will not see files that are there. This is reportedly fixed in MacOS 10.6, but 
we're not willing to replace all those expensive PPC machines and Adobe 
software yet.
- We still have Mac OS9 machines in active use. (I know...)
- Other than that, Helios adds some functionality like OPI, but we're not 
using that anymore.

On the whole, Macs do not play well in a networking environment. Adobe on Mac 
certainly does not make things easier. They officially do not support 
networked computers. Helios makes life a bit easier for admins.