Problems

I cant see earth_server

Make sure it is not just that single macintosh. Check on another mac too. If it is a global problem, then restart the atalk service as shown below.

I want to see some web directory

Atalk follows symlinks, so if a user fred wants access to /WWW/fred.org, then put a link in ~fred to /WWW/fred.org and the user should be able to use it normally.

What are the .AppleDouble directories?

These store the mac icon and finder information. Yes they are annoying.

NetAtalk

The server earth_server.earth.monash.edu.au provides Macintosh computers access to its disk with the netatalk package.

This package can be stopped and started with sh /etc/rc.d/init.d/atalk start or stop.

If you are experiancing problems, then I suggest that you stop the service, rmmod appletalk to remove the appletalk protocol from the server, and then start the service.

/etc/atalk/config contains startup variables that are important for this service. The main one to change is the ATALK_NAME variable which controls the name the machine appears in the chooser under.

afpd

Appletalk file something daemon. The file /etc/atalk/AppleVolumes.default contains the list of file systems to show on the chooser and their names. In the default example below, there is the users home directory, /export and /data/scratch offered to the user.

The file /etc/atalk/AppleVolumes.default:

# This file looks empty when viewed with "vi".  In fact, there is one
# '~', so users with no AppleVolumes file in their home directory get
# their home directory by default.
~
/export "Public Export Disk"
/data/scratch   "Scratch Space"