Resolved AFP share points and APFS (or is it High Sierra?) 🤔

[B S Magnet]

So, my late 2011 MBP A1278 has 10.6.8 on one physical SSD and 10.13.6 on a second physical SSD (this second SSD has macOS on an APFS container).

[I also have a late 2013 iMac running 10.13.6 on its OEM spinner, and that’s on an HFS+ partition (because it’s still a spinner).]

When connecting, via AFP, to my MBP (whilst booted into 10.13.6) from any and every of my other Macs, I run through the usual login of the AFP server. Instead of it presenting the usual, selectable list of share points (typically, user directory, public folder, and drives on the serving Mac), it skips that step and mounts the 10.6.8 volume only. Which is also to say: AFP server works fine, but for whatever reason does not offer the HS volume or my user directory on the HS volume as share points.

I’ve double- and triple-checked Sharing prefPane settings on the MBP in HS, and there’s nothing amiss there. (Obviously, when the MBP is running 10.6.8, AFP client connections to the MBP aren’t going to see the APFS volume, so that’s not an issue, and the AFP server behaviour from SL is as expected).

Were this occurring with just one client Mac, then I might look at ditching the keychain for that saved AFP connection and saving a fresh one on next login. But given this is a server-side pattern, I’m not really sure why neither the option to see the list nor the ability to mount the 10.13.6 volume as an AFP share point are available.

Eliminating the possibility this is a High Sierra-only quirk of the deprecated AFP, I tried connecting to the AFP server on the late 2013 iMac from all of my Macs, and that works precisely as expected, with the selectable list of all available share points in the list. It’s entirely possible this asymmetry is because the iMac is running on HFS+.

So I’m at a loss. This isn’t really a pressing concern, but it is kind of perplexing and one whose root cause is still not clear. Cheers.

 

[B S Magnet]

OK. Never mind. I’m dense and here’s the answer: it can’t be done.

I reckon I could ask the mods to yank this thread, but this is some good humility.

 

[eyoungren]

OK. Never mind. I’m dense and here’s the answer: it can’t be done.

I reckon I could ask the mods to yank this thread, but this is some good humility.

Yeah, it's a result of Apple deprecating AFP and the use of APFS on SSDs. Whenever I wish to connect to my Mac Mini, or MBP boot drives I have to use SMB because both drives are SSDs with APFS. Just the way it is now.

I think the one exception is my SSD on my MacPro. It's still GUID and not APFS because the system was cloned from a GUID harddrive.

 

[B S Magnet]

Yeah, it's a result of Apple deprecating AFP and the use of APFS on SSDs. Whenever I wish to connect to my Mac Mini, or MBP boot drives I have to use SMB because both drives are SSDs with APFS. Just the way it is now.

Yah. I tried connecting via SMB, but then remembering how this really is only possible when connecting via SMB from HS to one of the older Macs (by specifying cifs:// to force HS to try connecting with the older SMB1 protocol), and not the other way round. I am disinterested in throwing on a third-party fix (and I feel like there’s some déjà vu as I write this very sentence, with the feeling I’ve written this before).

I think the one exception is my SSD on my MacPro. It's still GUID and not APFS because the system was cloned from a GUID harddrive.

As far as I understand, GUID/GPT is still the partition scheme, whereas APFS is the container used within a partition for an APFS-formatted partition — which is how it can be possible to have both a HFS+ OS contained on one partition on the same physical device as a partition with an APFS OS like High Sierra or later.

 

[joevt]

As far as I understand, GUID is still the partition scheme, whereas APFS is the container used within a partition for an APFS disk — which is how it can be possible to have both a HFS+ OS contained on one partition on the same physical device as a partition with an APFS OS like High Sierra or later.

I don't think there's such a thing as an APFS disk. A disk containing APFS volumes will always be a GPT formatted disk with multiple partitions and APFS volumes are always contained within an APFS container which is a partition of the GPT formatted disk.
Doesn't matter whether there exists other partitions with different file systems.

 

[B S Magnet]

I don't think there's such a thing as an APFS disk. A disk containing APFS volumes will always be a GPT formatted disk with multiple partitions and APFS volumes are always contained within an APFS container which is a partition of the GPT formatted disk.
Doesn't matter whether there exists other partitions with different file systems.

I think this is exactly what I was saying.

 

[joevt]

I think this is exactly what I was saying.

Yes, it just sounded weird - like partitions didn't exist before APFS was invented or something.

 

[B S Magnet]

Yes, it just sounded weird - like partitions didn't exist before APFS was invented or something.

In my defence, I was exhausted when I wrote that. I’m not as precise with my writing when my brain is tired.