About Netatalk

Netatalk is a Free and Open Source file server that implements the Apple Filing
Protocol (AFP) 3.4 over TCP/IP and AppleTalk. AFP is the primary file sharing
protocol used on Apple II, Classic Mac OS, and Mac OS X, as well as one of
several supported protocols on macOS. A *NIX/*BSD system running Netatalk
provides high-speed AppleShare file sharing for Mac clients.

Why Should I Use Netatalk?

If you have a local network macOS, Mac OS X, Classic Mac OS, or even Apple II
computers, running a Netatalk AppleShare server allows you to share, collaborate
on, and back up files comfortably. The latest macOS at the time of writing
(macOS 15 Sequoia) ships with an AFP client, so Netatalk can act as a seamless
bridge between new and old Macs.

Compared to cross-platform file sharing protocols like NFS and FTP, Netatalk
delivers a Mac-like user experience, with seamless integration of Mac filesystem
metadata (such as resource forks on Classic Mac OS) and modern macOS services
such as Bonjour, Time Machine, and Spotlight.

Compared to Samba, Netatalk has demonstrably faster transfer speeds, as well as
stronger backwards compatibility with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion clients, and
earlier.

AppleTalk

Netatalk supports the AppleTalk family of protocols, allowing it to provide AFP
file sharing and other services with very old Macs or Apple II computers.

All versions of Netatalk except the 3.x release series can speak AppleTalk.

Community

Netatalk developers and users can be found in online communal spaces like
TinkerDifferent or 68kmla. You can head over there if you want to ask for help
or share your Netatalk stories.

There is also an official Netatalk Discussions board on GitHub which is the best
place to ask for technical assistance.

Finally, the traditional place where Netatalk developers and users interact with
each other are the netatalk-admins and netatalk-devel mailing lists. While these
lists aren't as active as they used to be, the archives are a veritable treasure
trove of decades of Mac networking know-how.

Installation

See INSTALL.md

Docker

See DOCKER.md

Webmin module

An administrative GUI frontend built on the Webmin 2.0 platform is distributed
with Netatalk.

See the Webmin README for instructions how to install and get started with the
module.

An overview of the module's feature set can be found in the wiki.

Contributions

Bug reports and feature requests should be filed as GitHub issue tickets.

Before contributing code to the project, please read the coding guidelines in
the wiki on how to prepare a PR that is likely to be accepted by the
maintainers.

PRs are automatically picked up by GitHub CI, which runs the builds, integration
tests, as well as static analysis scan on SonarCloud (the latter only for PRs
created by project members.)

Security

We would love to hear from you if you think you found a security vulnerability
in Netatalk. Please file a security issue ticket with us, and we will follow up
with you as soon as possible.

Documentation

To aid in your installation and configuration of Netatalk, a comprehensive html
manual is published online.

Additionally, each Netatalk program and configuration file also has a troff man
page which can be accessed on the command line, f.e. man afpd.

Wiki

Collaborative articles can be found on the Netatalk wiki hosted on GitHub.

Editing is open to all registered GitHub users. We welcome improvements to
existing material, as well as brand new articles on topics concerning Netatalk
or Mac networking in general.

Website

The Netatalk website netatalk.io is where project updates and resources are
published, including documentation, release notes, security advisories, links to
related projects, and more.
