Installing Netatalk on NetBSD

Install the latest Netatalk

NetBSD is one out of a handful of distributions that still actively maintain an AppleTalk kernel module.

Additionally, it has both a Netatalk 3.x as well as a Netatalk 2.x package in the pkgsrc repository that work out of the box.

For building and installing from source yourself, find links to the official documentation below.

• Compile Netatalk from Source: NetBSD in the Manual
• INSTALL.md in the source tree

Required packages

Before starting, make sure you have a working pkgsrc environment.

Install the packages that netatalk22 depends on:

pkg_add \
  git \
  mozilla-rootcerts-openssl \
  gcc13 \
  autoconf \
  libtool \
  pkg-config \
  db5 \
  libgcrypt \
  libressl \
  gmake \
  cups \
  cracklib

Install netatalk22 itself:

pkg_add netatalk22

Configuration

In older versions of Netatalk, you had to enable the NetBSD init script with the --enable-netbsd or equivalent compile time flag.

Once installed, you can control the netatalk service as any other NetBSD service.

If needed, copy the installed netatalk initscripts to the /etc/rc.d directory.

AppleTalk

NetBSD comes with an AppleTalk kernel module (/sys/netatalk) which Netatalk can use for DDP transport protocol out of the box.

In order to register with the AppleTalk protocols, the /etc/services file must contain proper protocol definitions. These aren't always provided out of the box, so you may have to add these lines manually if atalkd and other AppleTalk apps are throwing unknown protocol errors:

rtmp		1/ddp		# Routing Table Maintenance Protocol
nbp		2/ddp		# Name Binding Protocol
echo		4/ddp		# AppleTalk Echo Protocol
zip		6/ddp		# Zone Information Protocol

afpovertcp	548/tcp		# AFP over TCP
afpovertcp	548/udp

From: https://github.com/Netatalk/netatalk/blob/main/config/services.atalk