Tech Info 065: How to demo HELIOS products on a stand alone Mac OS X 10.2 PowerBook

HELIOS Tech Info #065 

Fri, 29 Nov 2002

How to demo HELIOS products on a stand alone Mac OS X 10.2 PowerBook

With a current model of the Apple PowerBook line you can present a demo where the PowerBook is at the same time the HELIOS Server as well an EtherShare AFP client. 
In case the PowerBook does not have an active network connection, you have to configure an interface with a valid IP address first before starting the HELIOS products.
For example:
# ifconfig en0 192.16.1.1
# $HELIOSDIR/start-helios
You can also include your “ifconfig” sequence into the HELIOS script “/Library/StartupItems/HELIOS/HELIOS” so that your stand alone configuration is activated each time you start HELIOS services and there is no active network connection.
Replace the commands between “then” and “fi” in the following sequence by another “ConsoleMessage” and your “ifconfig” line:
CheckForNetwork 
if [ "${NETWORKUP}" = "-NO-" ]
then
ConsoleMessage "HELIOS: no network active"
sleep 3
exit
fi

For example:

CheckForNetwork 
if [ "${NETWORKUP}" = "-NO-" ]
then
ConsoleMessage "HELIOS: stand alone network active"
sleep 3
ifconfig en0 192.16.1.1
fi

Further required preparations:

  • Define your EtherShave volume(s) to reside on the root partition of the boot volume. EtherShare volumes located elsewhere, e.g. below "/Volumes/" wont work and may result in a hangup of the PowerBook.
  • Include the specified IP address in the IP Access list for EtherShare so that the AFP client is allowed to connect.
  • Specify an AFP port different from the default number "548"

    Set the EtherShare preference “afpport” to an unused port, for example:
    $HELIOSDIR/bin/prefvalue -k Programs/afpsrv/afpport -t int 1088

    Then stop and start the EtherShare “afpsrv”:
    $HELIOSDIR/bin/srvutil stop afpsrv
    $HELIOSDIR/bin/srvutil start afpsrv
Now you can connect from the "Chooser" to the EtherShare server by entering "afp://" followed by the EtherShare server name (or IP number) followed by a colon (:) and the specified port.

Example:

afp://HELIOS EtherShare:1088
or:
afp://localhost:1088
This mounting of AFP volumes through a loopback connection will only work when the volumes reside on the boot partition and a different port than 548 is used.

Note:

This is no official MacOS X 10.2 feature and may not work on future MacOS X releases.
Make sure to access data on EtherShare volumes only through the AFP connected volumes.  Doing this directly on UFS/HFS+ volumes by means of the Finder, will bypass EtherShare and result in outdated information in the “.Desktop” databases of the related volumes.
Another way of doing this correctly would be to use the HELIOS “dt” utilities, or connecting to the EtherShare volume from another Mac by means of AFP. 
Though you can also mount PCShare volumes by using the SMB client provided by Apple on MacOS X 10.2, working on these volumes will not work as expected as the outdated SMB implementation for the Apple SMB client is not supported by PCShare.
Instead you can try mounting PCShare volumes using Virtual PC.