Re: AppleTalk

[Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>]

On Sat, Feb 03, 2018 at 07:06:06AM +0100, Maxime Villard wrote:
> I've had a conversation with core@ about the removal of our kernel AppleTalk
> code, and I was asked to send a mail here to give people a chance to comment.
> 
> In NetBSD we have a kernel implementation of AppleTalk, in sys/netatalk/. This
> code provides a user API (AF_APPLETALK, sockaddr_at etc.), that userland tools
> can use to create sockets.
> 
> Our kernel netatalk has not been maintained in years, is grossly not MP-safe
> (global variables), and I already found a bug that could be triggered even
> when no AppleTalk interface was configured [1].
> 
> The userland 'netatalk' package, which we do have in pkgsrc, offers the same
> functionalities as our kernel netatalk code. This package is well maintained

Are you sure it does the same thing ? the netatalk package does appletalk
over IP with regular AF_INET sockets and doesn't need special kernel
support. AF_APPLETALK is appletalk over ethernet, without the IP layer.
This was called ethertalk in the apple world, appletalk being the
original, serial based, apple network protocol.

AFAIK appletalk over IP is supported since MacOS X, and maybe before.
Early MacOS X releases probably had support for ethertalk too.
MacOS 9 and before did use ethertalk. Apple also produced peripherals
(e.g. printers) that had support for appletalk and/or ethertalk, but not IP.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--