What is avahi-daemon service
The avahi-daemon Linux service runs on client machines to perform network-based Zeroconf service discovery. Avahi is an implementation of the DNS Service Discovery and Multicast DNS specifications for Zeroconf Networking. User applications receive notice of discovered network services and resources using the Linux D-Bus message passing. The daemon coordinates application efforts in caching replies, helping minimize network traffic.
Avahi provides a set of language bindings, including Python and Mono. Because of its modularized architecture, Avahi is already integrated into major desktop components like GNOME’s Virtual File System or KDE’s input/output architecture. Refer http://avahi.org/ for further specifications.
Avahi works as DNS-SD & mDNS querier/responder. Common services discovered/shared by avahi-daemon are:
- file sharing
- network printers
- web/mail services
If there is no need for Zeroconf capabilities on your host, Avahi can be turned off. You can turn off the service by using the following:
# service avahi-dnsconfd stop # service avahi-daemon stop
You can make this configuration persistent across reboots by performing the following:
# chkconfig avahi-daemon off # chkconfig avahi-dnsconfd off
Removing the avahi-daemon package
It is not possible to remove this package completely without removing many dependencies. The avahi libraries are being used by many packages, mostly included with a desktop environment. It can be however stopped and disabled as mentioned above.
A majority of the components installed by default do not need it. For example lets consider, if you have uninstalled avahi from your server then anything you install in the future that depends on it will install it anyway (as a dependency).