Re: Server issues

> On Nov 21, 2007 6:39 AM, Soren Hansen <soren@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 20, 2007 at 08:52:33AM -0600, Loye Young wrote:
> > AVAHI
> > I absolutely hate avahi.

>Then why did you install it in the first place?

I didn't! That's the whole problem! Avahi gets dragged in as a dependency to all the *buntu desktop GUIs, the CUPS server, and various client applications as well. 

The only method I see to avoid having avahi on a system is to use only a command line interface and not use the CUPS server, or else spend a few days trying to figure out how to roll-your-own desktop. That's a difficult pill to swallow for customers who are making the switch from MS Server and other GUI-based server products. 

You have to understand the market for the Ubuntu Server Edition. Enterprise customers are largely using RedHat, SUSE, or other products built specifically for the enterprise. Those customers have system administrators and network administrators dedicated to taking care of the server. They are comfortable with the command line, or else are paid to get comfortable with it. 

Ubuntu Server Edition, by contrast, appeals to the small and medium sized company, which typically has a very small IT department, if it have one at all. The poor soul managing the IT "department" of a small business has to administer client systems, the network, and the servers, plus provide tech support for user applications. Basically, everything connected to a keyboard or a monitor. That IT manager wants a GUI because he or she can't remember every geek-speak command necessary to run everything. 

When the GUI desktop gets installed, the desktop dependencies drag in avahi and network-manager, which both hijack the network configuration in thinly documented ways. Although I'm not in love with network-manager either, at least it does provide an intuitive and explicit method to opt out of it. Avahi, on the other hand, lurks behind the scenes looking for and responding to other machines. It doesn't tell you what it's up to, what it's found, or what has found it. If several *buntu systems are around, they all start setting up connections to each other without telling you. To add insult to injury, getting avahi off the system (or even disabling it), requires an a priori understanding of zeroconf and a knowledge of exactly where and how it has embedded itself in the
  network subsystem. 

If we ever get around to creating a server GUI, as I have proposed from time-to-time, perhaps the issue can quietly die because such a GUI could simply run the administrative applications, but without avahi. (See, 
e.g., the gadmintools, gbindadmin, gdhcpd, gproftpd, gsambad, gkdebconf, gps, tinyca, fwbuilder, bluefish, system-config-cluster, and mysql-admin packages.)


-- 
Loye Young
Isaac & Young Computer Company
Laredo, Texas
(956) 857-1172
loye.young@xxxxxxxx