AppleTalk
Getting Appletalk working
Some people running Mac OS 9 still want to use Appletalk.
Installing
Installation is easy, just use apt-get:
$ sudo apt-get install netatalk
The Problem
The Ubuntu node shows up on the Appletalk network as 'localhost'. This is due to 'hostname -s' returning localhost instead of using the real name (in /etc/init.d/netatalk).
The Solution
Change the appropriate line in /etc/hosts and move the real hostname in front of 'localhost.localdomain', for example:
127.0.0.1 realname localhost.localdomain localhost
Appletalk Printing
Getting your Ubuntu installation to print to an Appletalk printer is relatively easy.
First, install Netatalk from apt or Synaptic (see above).
Once that is installed, run "nbplkup" to find the names of the Appletalk printers on your network. Make a note of thse names.
Edit /etc/cups/printers.conf (as root) to add the printer. [http://www.birdhouse.org/~mnep/printers.conf Here's an example] for a printer named "LaserWriter Select 360". The "LW360" you see is the name you'd like to see in Ubuntu. It can be almost anything. The "LaserWriter Select 360" name you see in the URL must be exactly the name that nbplkup gave you for the printer.
This example assumes a single, default Appletalk zone. If you have more than one zone, replace the * in the printer URL with the zone name.
The last step is to provide CUPS with a working PAP (the Netatalk printing methodology) backend. You may download one from [http://www.birdhouse.org/~mnep/pap here]. Once you have that file, cd to where that file is stored and
chmod +x pap
sudo mv pap /usr/lib/cups/backend
Now all you need to do is restart CUPS. You can do this with
sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart
This should provide you with Appletalk printing. Open the Printing admin tool and ensure the printer appears there. Try sending a test page.
If all is well, the only remaining step is to ensure Mozilla variant browsers will print. Mozilla uses a newer Ghostscript engine than most Apple printers will support. If an error page stating this comes from the printer when you try to print from Firefox/Mozilla, change the default print string in Firefox/Mozilla's printing prefs to
"gs -q -sDEVICE=pswrite -sOutputFile=- -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dMozConvertedToLevel2=true - | lpr ${MOZ_PRINTER_NAME:+'-P'}${MOZ_PRINTER_NAME}"
There you go. Appletalk printing from Ubuntu! Enjoy.
Bug or Feature ?
There's an open bug report documenting the problem with said order in /etc/hosts that is causing trouble with other programs, too.