[Netatalk-admins] Fixed, more or less - was: Re: Home directories appearing when I don't want them

[James N. <net...@re...>]

On 5/26/11 10:50 AM, Chris Boot wrote:
 > James,
 >
 > Check your Avahi magic. When you add the TXT record, what value do you give
 > for adVF? One of the flags you can specify makes home directories
 > automagically appear through no fault of netatalk. I have my flags set to 
0x100:
 >
 > <txt-record>sys=waMA=<<redacted>>,adVF=0x100</txt-record>
 >
 > HTH,
 > Chris

Well, that got me pointed in the right direction, and I have it fixed now.
I had followed one of many guides for making a Time-Capsule-like share, and 
most of them indicated that the adVF value for the Time Capsule's dkN= record 
"should" be 0x81, 0x83, or maybe 0xA1.  I had chosen 0x83, mostly because it 
appeared most often, but it appears that the additional bit-value of 0x10 is 
the "doesn't support home directories" flag.  As a result, I ended up with a 
value of 0x93 instead, which makes it work as expected, with no annoying 
mystery home directories.

Here's what I don't get:  The bit-values of "0x80" and "0x01" are clearly 
documented by Apple as meaning "Supports Time Machine" and "Supports AFP", 
respectively.  Genuine Apple Time Capsules in the wild have been seen 
reporting values of 0x81 and 0x83.  OSX Server reports a value of 0xA1 for its 
Time Machine backup support.  The fact that "0x10" represents a "doesn't 
support home directories" has been inferred, and the value of the extra 0x20 
that OSX Server adds is still unknown.  But...
*Where are these documented?*

The adVF value you have above (0x100) only seems to appear in the wild 
attached to the sys= record, never to a dkN= record, and has no explanation as 
to ITS purpose either.  I see an adVF value of 0x200 attached to my Mac's 
remote optical disk sharing service (_odisk._tcp) - no explanation.

Somewhere, these values have to be documented - with their significance. 
Usually I'd expect to find them in some sort of .h file, clearly spelled out 
for easy use.  But I can't find ANY comprehensive documentation of these 
values.  There's at least 5 of them that are total unknowns, and one that's 
merely an educated guess.  It would be really nice to understand their actual 
significance, and make sure that the values being used are actually correct 
for the situation in which they're being used.

Any suggestions on where/how I might be able to find these crazy bit-values 
documented for reference?