What is the process 'check_afp'?

[michaelsanford]

I noticed it running now that I'm connected to AFP over TCPIP via my ssh tunnel.

What does it do? There's no manpage for it.

 

[scruffy]

Here's what I turned up fairly quickly:

It lives at
/System/Library/Filesystems/AppleShare/check_afp.app

If you double click it, it won't launch.

There is a file inside the app bundle at
Contents/Resources/English.lproj/messages.strings
which opens by default in xcode, and looking through the messages might help you figure out what it does

Now my question:
How do you make AFP connect over ssh? I've tried telling it to allow connection over ssh, but it always connects over plain old AFP/TCP

 

[michaelsanford]

Cool I'll check it out with devtools.

Goes and checks the FAQ section...returns shocked that there isn't a FAQ on SSH tunneling, and writes one.

http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?p=305636#post305636

 

[scruffy]

Oh, I see! You're connecting tunneling local ports to remote ones over ssh - then get afp to connect to the localhost at your forwarded port. Gotcha.

Cause if you choose the "connect to server" menu item in finder, choose your server, click "options", there is a checkbox for "allow secure connections using ssh". I was trying to figure out how to get that to work...

 

[michaelsanford]

I believe that checkbox refers to your inability to connect to localhost. AFP won't let you connect to yourself, but I suppose checking that removes that block.

Example: I can't tunnel a Rendezvous port to share iTunes music because iTunes won't let you connect to localhost to stream (one step ahead of me ). I tried that to alleviate that iTunes 4.x update that prevented internet sharing.