[avahi] Avahi scope?

[Lee Cullens]

Trent Lloyd wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 14, 2006 at 05:07:31PM -0500, Lee Cullens wrote:
>   
>> Lee Cullens wrote:
>>     
>>> Avahi scope?
>>> ...................................................................
>>> P4 with Debian Etch (testing), kernel 2.6.12-1-686 (2.6.12-10), Gnome 
>>> desktop
>>> PMac G5 running OS X Tiger (10.4.3)
>>> New to Linux and putting up a no doze Linux & Mac LAN
>>> ...................................................................
>>>
>>> I've installed netatalk on my Linux box, and now can access and move 
>>> files into and out of a shared directory on the Linux box from my Mac. 
>>> In order to discover the Mac and a printer on the Mac from the Linux 
>>> box, I found instructions that included installing mdnsresponder and 
>>> howl-tools on the Linux box. 
>>> The Debian packages included mdnsresponder but not howl-tools which I 
>>> understand isn't being maintained anymore.  As I'm sure you already 
>>> know, I instead found Avahi on Debian and that's not the 0.6.3 
>>> version.  So in reading through the material for Avahi I see an item 
>>> in the FAQ about not running multiple mDNS responders.
>>>
>>> I'm not exactly sure, but it seems to me that if I use Avahi I should 
>>> not also use mdnsresponder - i.e. that Avahi replaces the combination 
>>> of mdnsresponder and howl-tools.  Is this layman interpretation correct? 
>>> If so, I guess my next step is to figure out just what I need of Avahi 
>>> and try to build and install the latest 0.6.3 version, rather than the 
>>> Debian 0.6.1 version that might have a problem?
>>>
>>> Thank you,
>>> Lee C
>>>
>>>       
>> Never mind.  I found where Avahi conflicts with mdnsresponder.  The 
>> problem is that if I were to remove mdnsresponder and install Avahi then 
>> I would need dbus rather than dbus1  which would in turn wipe out at 
>> least the majority of my testing version Gnome desktop.  It may be that 
>> such could be done with the unstable Gnome desktop, but I don't want 
>> move whole-hog to unstable because that would undoubtedly lead to more 
>> issues.  Yet another catch-22 :-( 
>>     
>
> That has nothing to do with mdnsresponder.
>
> Avahi requires dbus 0.3 or above, debian probably still has 0.2 in
> testing and so you cannot install it without upgrading it, which can
> only be done in i think unstable, maybe even experimental.
>
> The conflicts with mdnsresponder are due to the need to listen on the
> same port and that sort of thing.  Avahi can replace both mdnsresponder
> and howl-utils (well, i dont know exactly of the utils in howl-utils,
> but we have most usefull things, publish-service, etc) You can even make
> use of the Bonjour or Howl API using programs using our compatability
> layer.
>
> Trent
>   
Guess I didn't word it very well.   I meant that "if I were to install 
Avahi as an alternative to mdnsresponder" I hit the dbus version issue 
and don't want to go whole-hog unstable (even if that is enough).  
Testing (Etch) is enough exposure for me, but I'll pull the occasional 
package from unstable if I think I really need it and there aren't too 
many consequences :-)  

I'm back to my research trying to find a way to "discover" my Mac and a 
printer on my Mac from my Debian Etch box.  The Debian box has netatalk 
installed and from my Mac I can see it and share files.

I'm happy to see Avahi jumping into the void and look forward to it 
settling down in at least testing.   There is a Avahi-client package in 
Debian testing, but I can't seem to figure out how to use it to discover 
my Mac :-(

Thanks for the reply,
Lee C