[PLUG] turning off avahi

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Fri Jan 30 02:28:27 UTC 2009


The distro I use, Scientific Linux 5.0, installs with the avahi
daemon enabled.  Avahi is the open source implementation of
Zeroconf aka Bonjour aka "link local".  Avahi chooses IP
addresses for machines on a network without a DHCP server,
discovers hardware like ethernet-connected printers, etc. 
In the abstract, a fine thing.

In reality, it sucks.  When I operate my laptop unconnected from
the wired network for a few minutes, avahi helpfully assigns an
ethernet address of 169.254.x.x to the port.  Which remains, even
after I plug an ethernet cable back in.  Of course, that address
is not routable on my network, nor can other machines find the
normally fixed DHCP-assigned IP address for my laptop.  That
means I have to stop and restart eth0.  That is broken, IMHO. 

So, I turned off the avahi daemon, and took it out of the boot
sequence.  Sadly,  I am told that the dark gods of dependency
hell have decreed that for the upcoming version 5.3 of my distro,
the cups print management software depends on cups-libs, which
depends on avahi-compat-libdns_sd, which depends on avahi, which
is enabled when it is installed.  Somebody needs a spanking.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs



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