Do I need any part of Avahi at all?

[Robert Heller]

At Mon, 28 Sep 2020 15:50:09 +0100 "Ubuntu user technical support,  not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> On Mon 28 Sep 2020 at 09:45:48 -0400, Robert Heller wrote:
> 
> > At Mon, 28 Sep 2020 08:40:20 -0400 "Ubuntu user technical support,  not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > one person's anecdote:
> > > 
> > > I've been running that way for years... removing avahi whenever it showed
> > > up. It's a different (supposedly easier/self/autoconfiguring) way of doing
> > > the same thing, but if you're handy with dns and dhcp, then there is very
> > > little value in avahi.
> > 
> > Avahi is an "Apple" thing that is meant to auto-discover things on your
> > network and auto-configure them. This *might* be a good idea for people who
> > are totally clueless and are randomly plugin in printers, scanners, computers,
> > and such into their home network. I guess it *sometimes* works ok. It can be a
> > royal pain in the arse if you have a well organized LAN (eg you have a DHCP
> > server configured to give "static" IP addresses to your networked devices) and
> > a DNS server (eg Bind9) that provides host names for all of your network
> > devices. Avahi will *probable* provide confusing (not always correct)
> > configurations. That is, if you have a networked printer that you have
> > carefully configured on your LAN, Avahi will procede to auto-configure it
> > *again*, not necessarily the wayv*you* want it configured, likely as not
> > creating an additional printer queue, so you might suddenly have two print
> > queues on your wife's laptop: HomeOfficePrinter (that you configured) and
> > LP12847585 (showing up "randomly" and confusing your wife). This sort of
> > nonsense kept happening at the local library where I manage a network of
> > Ubuntu workstations, until I did an apt-get purge \*avahi\*...
> 
> Some users might classify this as a totally clueless analysis of the
> situation :). Avahi does not auto-configure printers.

Maybe Avahi + CUPS or some CUPS+Avahi deamon. I don't remember exactly, but a
"strangely" named printer would show up from time to time. It might also have
been something in Gnome (2 at the time) in FireFox. Whatever. It was with
Ubuntu 14.04 and it was causing confusion by providing an additional
(misconfigured!) printer that patrons at the library were selecting that was
either hanging the printer by trying to send a PDF file to the (old) HP
LaserJet in raw mode or else printing a PostScript file as plain text (many
pages of "gibberish" -- ie PostScript code). Cured by getting rid of the Avahi
deamons and utilities. There might have a (buggy?) cups+Avahi deamon involved
as well. Maybe that partitular "feature" has been fixed or removed. I don't
know. All I know is that Avahi does not always get along with a well-regulated
LAN. It appears to be something intended for ad-hoc networks as some sort of
auto discovery system for people who may not know what they are doing and may
work ok in some cases, but might not "play nice" with more "traditionally" set
up LANs.

> 

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