how to connect to a server with "clear text" passwords

Hi there,

I saw this on the following discussion board and it may fix your problem:

http://forum.qnap.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=4327&sid=7c53c8403fbca7af935839dd0e f0ff3a

To set it up you need to modify the AppleShare preferences file. This file is called
com.apple.AppleShareClient.plist, and is located in ~/Library/Preferences (that is,
the Library folder off your home folder).

With no AFP connection active, double click on the .plist file to open it. Then change
the values of the items called "afp cleartextallow" and "afp cleartextwarn" to Yes,
from their default values of No. Then save the preferences file.

You may need a plist editor to do this - I did.

This lets me mount a specific server by going "Connect to server" and then add them to login items so they'd stay connected but didn't enable me to browse Appleshare zones which is still not working for here (although I can see them when I try to add printers).

The com.apple.AppleShareClient.plist on both of my computers does not have the items "afpcleartextallow" and "afpcleartextwarn". I used PListEdit Pro to look but they're not there. Any suggestions? I'm trying to connect to a Snap Server that needs clear text.

Using the method above, I was able to gain access to my SnapServer. The problem now is that file transfers from the server to the mac are PAINFULLY slow. Uploads to the server from the mac seem the same as under 10.4

The problem only affects AFP transfers. File transfers from the server using FTP or SMB transfer very quickly. This is not an ideal solution though, as both of those protocol have caused issues with permissions and file ownership (documents loosing their app association).

Hopefully the upcoming 10.5.2 update will resolve this issue. None of the workstations still using 10.4 have this problem.

My plist doesn't contain those items either. I downloaded a plist editor and added them and I still can't get to my clear text server on a Novell network. Do the key values need to Boolean? I would love it if someone who was able to edit the plist successfully could e-mail me the file.

Thank you for any help or advice.

hmmm... just catching up on all this. 10.5.2 has NOT fixed this unfortunately. I've just upgraded my machine today and am now using Leopard - with an older snapserver 1100. i can access with the guest account, but as mentioned by CleanerSD, the transfers FROM the server are VERY slow.

Does anyone have any other solutions to this? obviously i could rethink my network server, but the snapserver has always worked great with various older macs and windows machines we have. i haven't investigated NAS solutions recently; what is on the market these days with the same or better features as the snapservers in a cross-platform small office environment? nothing matched up to Snap a few years ago when i researched...

Ok, i've got a little further with this. the plist editing to allow cleartext passwords was the first step. i could then log in with my username and password to my server (Snap). next problem was the VERY slow data transfer speeds. this has been temporarily fixed by changing the delayed ACK settings (do a google search for "delayed ACK osx"). i'm not very technical but this has really improved data transfer over the network (AFP). there might be side effects to all of this, but at least i can now access my server at reasonable speeds (400mb WAS taking 40 mins, now it's less than a minute!). Hopefully apple will fix all of this in a future patch so these hacks can be removed.

This solved my issues with logging on to a Snap Server 1100 under 10.5...
With making this change to the plist I'm now coming in under AFP. Before I would only be able to log in under the Windows protocol (which was giving me all sorts of problems).
Note: depending on how you Snap Server is configured you may have to sign in under "Guest" in order to log on.

If you having trouble editing the plist file download "PlistEdit Pro". It worked for me long enougn under the 'free trial' to make the change with out having to pay for it.