A pretty good explanation can be found here:

http://www.anders.com/projects/netatalk/ 

-dgl-

At 1:49 PM -0600 12/10/00, Jojo wrote:
>i have the -asun enhanced version 1.3 installed. when i type atalkd its
>starting up and i can edit /etc.netatalk/atalkd.conf to restrict it to a
>certain interface. on ps -x it shows up as:
>245 ?? S 0:00:07 atalkd
>but it doesnt state the interface as the dhclient does.
>it doesnt show up in the chooser and when i try connecting via ip# it doesnt
>work either.
>what i need is a how-to that explains how to configure it once it is started
>up. the man pages arent very helpful to me (i am a novice user on unix!)
>and how do i set up a shared folder or volume? how do i set permissions? is
>there a sample script or config file for the version i am running?
>i am really stuck with this... help!
>
>> From: Donald Lee <donlee_ppc@icompute.com>
>> Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 11:22:17 -0600
>> To: port-macppc@netbsd.org
>> Cc: Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.lip6.fr>, Jojo <info@thrill-inc.com>
>> Subject: Re: netatalk...help!
>> 
>> At 7:58 AM -0600 12/10/00, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
>>> On Sat, Dec 09, 2000 at 11:17:45PM -0800, Jojo wrote:
>>>> anyone have a netbsd netatalk setup hot-to?
>>>> there is no entry in the man pages, only afpd and atalk.
>>>> these are not very useful in how to set up the system to start appletalk via
>>>> tcp @ startup, or how to setup shared volumes/directories.
>>> 
>>> I'm not sure appletalk over IP works with netatalk. With the netatalk package
>>> you should have an rc.atalk script. Just start it, and you should have
>>> appletalk working.
>> 
>> There are several versions.  The original (and long unmaintained)
>> version from umich only supports appletalk.  This was updated by
>> Adrian Sun to create the "asun" version.  This one does support
>> Appleshare over IP, but Adrian moved on, and the community put together
>> a continuation project on SourceForge.
>> 
>> The most recent work is being done on sourceforge.  Check out:
>> 
>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/netatalk/
>> 
>> -dgl-
>> 
>>