On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Stephen Welker wrote:
> Was it a decision by the original netatalk architects to have the software
> rewrite the config file?
>
> Is there a way to disable netatalk modifying the config file?
>
> Why couldn't netatalk simply report an error in a log file and allow the
> sysadmin fix it as they please?
It can be a pain sometimes, but it is nice that atalkd tells you what the
real network settings are. I don't think there is a way to prevent atalkd
from rewriting the config file (maybe chmod 000 atalkd.conf?), but you
wouldn't want to do that anyways. All the routers on an appletalk network
must agree on the netrange and zone for that cable, so atalkd needs to
change to match the current network settings if you aren't trying to seed
the network. I think bad things happen if you have two machines seeding
different numbers. There should really only be one seed router.
> The current/default situation is confusing to say the least. Especially when
> you are debugging one configuration and netatalk is giving you another!
>
> This gets even more confusing when dealing with seeded versus non-seeded
> networks, (sometimes an easy network requires some clever magic ;-) ever
> tried to switch between seeded and unseeded?
Nope. I've worked on a network with a set appletalk router (a Cisco
router) and on a network with no router (I setup atalkd to seed it).
> I gather by your response that only the "seeder" is the only node that is
> permitted to set a zone name?
Yes.
> Please excuse my novice AppleTalk expertise - I am used to plugging a few
> Macs & printers together - of course they work! However, I am trying to
> configure two independant networks on one host, as mentioned in my original
> post.
Check out this web site for lots of useful Appletalk networking
information. It is not too complicated.
http://www.neon.com/atalk_routing.html
Andy
