A utility to bridge classic AppleTalk networks over the internet, heavily inspired by abridge by Rob Braun.
You can run this utility on multiple systems on different networks and it will relay AppleTalk packets between them. It uses a rabbitmq server to relay the network packets instead of a proprietary server which means it is efficient and scalable. Rabbitmq also supports authentication and encryption so you can secure the network traffic as it traverses the wild internet.
The utility runs on an ethernet connected system (not wireless) and requires superuser privileges to run. It uses promiscuous mode on the specified network interface to capture all AppleTalk packets and relay them to the rabbitmq server. Simultaneously it receives all packets from other clients from the rabbitmq server and relays them to your local network as if they were locally produced packets.
The packets must be captured and transmitted from the wired ethernet network, so you can't run it on the same system as an emulator or, say, a netatalk server as it cannot capture the loopback packets. It is probably best to run it on a separate system, such as a raspberry pi.
It should capture EtherTalk packets introduced to the ethernet network from a LocalTalk network from a LocalTalk bridge like the AsantéTalk bridge but I haven't tried it myself.
sudo apt-get install -y libpcap-dev librabbitmq-dev uuid-dev libjson-c-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev
NOTE: This will work well on a raspberry pi.
brew install libpcap rabbitmq-c ossp-uuid json-c
git clone https://github.com/zenwheel/appletalk-bridge.git
cd appletalk-bridge
make
# create $HOME/.bridgerc (see below)
sudo ./appletalk-bridge
Settings should be put in a $HOME/.bridgerc file that's in the format:
# comment
Key = value
The available keys are:
Server = localhost # rabbitmq server address
Port = 5672 # rabbitmq port
APIPort = 15672 # rabbitmq API port for monitor mode, use -1 to disable using the API
User = guest # username for rabbitmq
Password = guest # password for the specified rabbitmq user
VHost = / # what virtual host to use with rabbitmq (usually /)
RunInForeground = true # set false to daemonize when launched
UseSSL = false # use SSL with rabbitmq?
APIUseSSL = false # use SSL with the rabbitmq API?
SSLVerifyPeer = false
SSLVerifyHostname = true
SSLCACertificateFile = <none>
SSLClientCertificateFile = <none>
SSLKeyFile = <none>
MonitorMode = false # disable relaying packets, display packets that are sent to the rabbitmq server, does not require superuser privileges
AMQPExchange = appleshare # name of rabbitmq exchange to create and use
Interface = <first available>
If you can't use $HOME/.bridgerc like because sudo doesn't pass your $HOME through, you can launch it with sudo ./appletalk-bridge -c /path/to/config instead.
Example $HOME/.bridgerc:
# rabbitmq server:
Server = localhost
Port = 5671
User = guest
Password = guest
UseSSL = true
If you want to set up your own rabbitmq server for your bridge, here's some starting points but there are lots of resources elsewhere that are too broad to cover here (rabbitmq is pretty complex and powerful):
Follow the instructions here to configure the erlang and rabbitmq package sources:
Then:
sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install -y rabbitmq-server erlang-ssl
brew install rabbitmq