Installing Netatalk on Ubuntu

Install Netatalk

netatalk is distributed as a package in Ubuntu. You can use apt to install it.

Ex. (with root privileges)

apt install netatalk

For building and installing from source yourself, for instance to get a newer version, follow the guides linked here.

• Installation Quick Start
• Compile Netatalk from Source

Setting Up

Edit /usr/local/etc/afp.conf.

Ex:

[Global]

[Homes]

   basedir regex = /home

[Test Volume]

   path = /export/test1

[My Time Machine Volume]

   path = /export/timemachine
   time machine = yes

It's recommended to enable extended attributes of filesystem. You can check it by getfattr and setfattr commands.

If you use ACL, you shoud check it by getfacl and setfacl commands.

If these are disabled, use tune2fs command or edit /etc/fstab file.

Ex:

/dev/sdc2    /mountpoint    ext4    defaults,user_xattr,acl    0 2

You should check firewall. AFP's port number is 548. Zeroconf's port number is 5353.

Enabling and Starting

The systemd unit file is /lib/systemd/system/netatalk.service. You must run Avahi ahead of Netatalk.

$ sudo systemctl enable avahi-daemon
$ sudo systemctl enable netatalk
$ sudo systemctl start avahi-daemon
$ sudo systemctl start netatalk

Spotlight Feature

If you want to use the Spotlight feature, set spotlight = yes.

Set spotlight = no for Time Machine's volume. The mining for sparsebundle is wasteful.

Ex:

[Global]

   spotlight = yes

[Homes]

   basedir regex = /home

[Test Volume]

   path = /export/test1

[My Time Machine Volume]

   path = /export/timemachine
   time machine = yes
   spotlight = no