Netatalk Installation Quick Start

This guide covers installing Netatalk from source on UNIX-like operating
systems.

Netatalk uses the Meson build system with Ninja as the backend.

Meson only supports out-of-tree builds, and must be passed a directory to put
built and generated sources into. We'll call that directory "build" here. It's
recommended to create a separate build directory for each configuration you
might want to use.

Get the source code

To build from a release tarball, download and unpack the tarball.

tar xjf netatalk-*.tar.xz                               # unpack the sources
cd netatalk-*                                           # change to the toplevel directory

To build from the Netatalk GitHub repo, make sure you have Git installed, then
clone the source tree.

git clone https://github.com/netatalk/netatalk.git      # clone the repository
cd netatalk                                             # change to the repo directory

Install software dependencies

At this point, you need to install the software dependencies for building and
running Netatalk.

This list is not exhaustive, and you may need to install additional software
depending on your platform and configuration. See the Compilation documentation
for more details.

Required

These are the libraries that are hard requirements for netatalk.

| Package | Details |
| --- | --- |
| bstring | built as subproject when shared library not found |
| iniparser | v3.1 or later |
| libevent2 OR libev |  |
| libgcrypt | v1.2.3 or later |

CNID Backend Requirements

At least one CNID backend is required for netatalk to function.

| Package | Backend | Details |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Berkeley DB | dbd | v4.6.0 or later (often packaged as bdb or sometimes db) |
| mysql-client OR mariadb-client | mysql |  |
| sqlite3 | sqlite |  |

Required for Build Environment

In order to build netatalk from source code, the following components are
required at the bare minimum.

| Package | Details |
| --- | --- |
| C compiler | clang or gcc are recommended |
| meson | v0.62.0 or later |
| ninja | often packaged as ninja-build |

Optional Features

| Package | Details |
| --- | --- |
| avahi OR mDNSresponder | Zeroconf support |
| cmark OR cmark-gfm OR pandoc | generating documentation |
| cracklib and cracklib dictionary | password strength check in afppasswd |
| Kerberos V | krbV UAM support |
| libacl | ACL support |
| libldap | LDAP support |
| libpam | PAM support |
| libtirpc OR libquota | Quota support |
| Perl | admin scripts |
| po4a | localization of documentation |
| talloc | Spotlight support |
| tcpwrap | TCP wrapper support |
| UnicodeData.txt | regenerating Unicode lookup tables |

Optional Spotlight Backends

In order to enable more advanced Spotlight search functionality such as content
searching or metadata, install the dependencies for one of the following search
backends.

LocalSearch

| Package | Details |
| --- | --- |
| bison | or compatible Yacc parser |
| D-Bus daemon |  |
| DConf | sometimes packaged as dconf-cli |
| GLib 2 and GIO |  |
| flex | or compatible lexer |
| localsearch OR tracker | v3.0 or later |
| tinysparql |  |

Xapian

| Package | Details |
| --- | --- |
| C++ compiler | clang++ or g++ are recommended |
| libmagic | MIME type detection; sometimes packaged as file |
| xapian-core |  |

Build the software

Use the meson command to compile and install Netatalk.

meson setup build                                       # configure the build
meson compile -C build                                  # build Netatalk

# Become root and install

sudo meson install -C build                             # install Netatalk

To uninstall Netatalk:

sudo ninja -C build uninstall                           # uninstall Netatalk

To test (requires the -Dwith-tests=true flag at configure time):

cd build && meson test

Configuration flags

When using Meson, to review the options which Meson chose, run:

meson configure

With additional arguments the meson setup build command can be used to configure
Netatalk according to user preference. All generic options passed to this
command take the form -Doption=value.

For example, to install Netatalk in a specific location:

meson setup build -Dprefix=/tmp/install

By default meson enables all Netatalk features if their dependencies are
available. However, many features can be enabled or disabled at configure time.

If meson cannot find the some required dependencies at configure time then the
user can also specify the path a library if it is installed in an unconventional
location.

Please see meson_options.txt for full details of all Netatalk-specific options,
and the Meson documentation for details of generic Meson options.

See also

The Netatalk manual has further resources to aid building and installation.

  - Installation chapter: detailed descriptions of each dependency
  - Compilation chapter: concrete build steps for each supported operating
    system
