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#1 2014-11-15 09:32:32

Vain
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Registered: 2008-10-19
Posts: 179
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[SOLVED] Getting rid of avahi?

I noticed that avahi is now started automatically via DBus service activation:

Nov 15 07:33:13 sedna dbus[247]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.Avahi' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.Avahi.service'
Nov 15 07:33:13 sedna systemd[1]: Starting Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack Activation Socket.
Nov 15 07:33:13 sedna systemd[1]: Listening on Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack Activation Socket.
Nov 15 07:33:13 sedna systemd[1]: Starting Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack...

It listens on two UDP ports:

udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:37269           0.0.0.0:*                           84         77911      26781/avahi-daemon: 
udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:5353            0.0.0.0:*                           84         77910      26781/avahi-daemon: 

Meh. I don’t use avahi anywhere and I don’t want to. Thus, I intentionally broke its config:

[server]
use-ipv4=no
use-ipv6=no

This approach sucks, but it prevents avahi from starting …

Is there a nicer or a recommended way of disabling avahi? How do you guys handle that? I can only think of the following options, none of which I consider optimal:

  • Compiling affected packages without support for avahi. Possibly a lot of work, maybe requires patching stuff.

  • Configure affected packages so that they don’t try to launch avahi. I thought I already did that. sad (I’m pretty sure cups is to blame.)

  • Try to fiddle with DBus and systemd, so avahi won’t get started automatically. Possibly unreliable.

  • Switch to Gentoo and hope that USE flags allow you to disable it globally.

Thanks in advance.

Last edited by Vain (2014-11-15 14:50:05)

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#2 2014-11-15 12:41:38

89c51
Member
Registered: 2012-06-05
Posts: 741

Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of avahi?

Mask the service maybe?? TBH i don't see any harm from having it running.

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#3 2014-11-15 14:49:55

Vain
Member
Registered: 2008-10-19
Posts: 179
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Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of avahi?

Thanks! Much better.

I didn’t realize that masking also applies to DBus activation. In retrospect, it’s pretty obvious—as always. smile

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#4 2014-11-17 15:48:47

kokoko3k
Member
Registered: 2008-11-14
Posts: 2,390

Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of avahi?

Are you sure masking it solves the issue?
After a reboot, it is running again.

Gozer ~ # ls -la /etc/systemd/system/avahi-daemon.service
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 17 nov 16.48 /etc/systemd/system/avahi-daemon.service -> /dev/null
Gozer ~ # systemctl status avahi-daemon
● avahi-daemon.service
   Loaded: masked (/dev/null)
   Active: active (running) since lun 2014-11-17 16:41:04 CET; 7min ago
 Main PID: 5257 (avahi-daemon)
   Status: "avahi-daemon 0.6.31 starting up."
   CGroup: /system.slice/avahi-daemon.service
           ├─5257 avahi-daemon: running [Gozer.local]
           └─5258 avahi-daemon: chroot helper
Gozer ~ # 

-EDIT-
Even disabling AND masking it doesn't work here.

Last edited by kokoko3k (2014-11-17 15:57:13)


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#5 2014-11-17 16:50:12

Vain
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Registered: 2008-10-19
Posts: 179
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Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of avahi?

Well, I masked them all:

$ l /etc/systemd/system/avahi*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 11-15 15:38 │ /etc/systemd/system/avahi-daemon.service -> /dev/null
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 11-15 15:38 │ /etc/systemd/system/avahi-daemon.socket -> /dev/null
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 11-15 15:38 │ /etc/systemd/system/avahi-dnsconfd.service -> /dev/null

And I guess the socket is the important one when it comes to DBus activation:

$ journalctl | grep avahi | tail -n 1
Nov 17 17:44:02 pinguin dbus[373]: [system] Activation via systemd failed for unit 'dbus-org.freedesktop.Avahi.service': Unit avahi-daemon.socket is masked.

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#6 2014-11-17 16:51:36

kokoko3k
Member
Registered: 2008-11-14
Posts: 2,390

Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of avahi?

ok thanks, i've missed that.

Last edited by kokoko3k (2014-11-17 16:51:45)


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#7 2014-11-17 18:14:16

orschiro
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Registered: 2009-06-04
Posts: 2,136
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Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of avahi?

May I ask why you want to prevent avahi from launching?

Is it very resource intensive?

I have it installed as a dependency but it is not automatically started on my Openbox system.

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#8 2014-11-17 18:59:38

Vain
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Registered: 2008-10-19
Posts: 179
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Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of avahi?

I’ve avoided to explain this because it might easily turn this thread into a religious discussion. smile

Let me just say this: I use my notebook on public networks. As avahi binds to 0.0.0.0, lots of random strangers are able to reach it. I don’t like that.

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#9 2014-11-17 19:02:43

orschiro
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Registered: 2009-06-04
Posts: 2,136
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Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of avahi?

Let me just say this: I use my notebook on public networks. As avahi binds to 0.0.0.0, lots of random strangers are able to reach it. I don’t like that.

Very valid reason. Thanks for elaborating!

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#10 2014-12-23 18:02:40

uraki66
Member
Registered: 2014-12-23
Posts: 1

Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of avahi?

I just ran into this on a server I'm configuring. As far as I can tell, you can't disable avahi since it auto-loads from dbus and it breaks things like Samba if you remove it or stop it from running.

Edit /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf

Under [server]

allow-interfaces=<your ethernet device>
deny-interfaces=<other ethernet device>

Under [publish]

disable-publishing=yes

And then 'systemctl restart avahi-daemon.service'

According to avahi docs, this starts avahi in query-only mode. You will see scary looking error messages with 'journactl -u avahi-daemon -b -0' but avahi will start and let the things that depend on it work.

I can see a use case for a laptop where you set the 'deny-interfaces' to the wireless NIC and set the wired ethernet device under 'allow-interfaces'.

That way, no one can see your services/resources when on wireless (but you can see them - use 'avahi-browse') and then when you are at your home/office and plugged into a wired network, avahi works as expected.

In any case, the 'disable-publishing=yes' definitely "disables" avahi as best I can tell.  Maybe this should be in the wiki.

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#11 2018-02-25 18:43:36

0BADC0DE
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From: Regnum Utriusque Siciliae
Registered: 2018-02-21
Posts: 268

Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of avahi?

Maybe I have a clean solution that's not breaking anything and not requiring any manual edit of any system file:

sudo systemctl disable avahi-daemon
sudo systemctl stop avahi-daemon

The point to me isn't whether it harms or not if you leave it running.
The point to me is that I know I don't need it and I want it not to run.


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#12 2018-02-25 19:15:55

V1del
Forum Moderator
Registered: 2012-10-16
Posts: 21,431

Re: [SOLVED] Getting rid of avahi?

Please don't necrobump an already solved thread with a solution that has already proven to be ineffective over the course of the thread. disabling a service won't prevent it from being brought up again through socket/dbus activation.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … bumping.22

Closing.

Last edited by V1del (2018-02-25 19:17:29)

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