I installed NetAtalk today, and then tried to get some Macs to use the server. Sharing home directories was easy, but the Macs couldn’t see anything in the documentation directory.
It turned out that Macs don’t like read-only folders, like my documentation dir. They don’t mind read-only contents, but they expect to be able to write information to help them draw the folder on screen. This seems a bit insane, but it probably looks good.
It wasn’t a new problem, so the NetAtalk can handle it: if you want to export read-only directories you must provide a writable dbpath for them.