[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Ubuntu changes to avahi

[Sjoerd Simons]

On Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 05:36:19PM +0200, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Hello again,
> 
> I promise, avahi is the last package in the Utopia merge stack. :)
> 
> Only easy things here anyway which should not need much discussion:
> 
> | - debian/avahi-daemon.ifupdown: Only check DNS if we are in 'start' mode.
> |   This avoids long delays when this is called as part of if-post-down.
> |   (LP #84128)
> | - debian/avahi-daemon-check-dns.sh: Do not do the expensive .local checks
> |   if the avahi daemon is not running.
> 
> I highly recommend to apply those to Debian.

Nice but both are slightly wrong. 

debian/avahi-daemon.ifupdown: 
  We need to check on ifdown too as in the case of multiple interfaces, the one
  corresponding with the .local dns server might have gone away and we can
  restart avahi. Not that the current check already tries hard to not check in
  cases we know that host will timeout, which should make it painless for
  single interface users without a local nameserver (no host -t.. is run then)

debian/avahi-daemon-check-dns.sh: 
  If avahi was disabled (thus not running), we want to check if we can restart
  it again.  With this patch if you ever connected to a network with a .local
  DNS server, your avahi will stop and never come back up.


But the general idea is correct. We don't have to run the check when we know
the situation isn't going to change. The major one still left is running the
check on ifdown when avahi wasn't disabled (Assuming no dns servers are added
on ifdown).

Not check on ifup when avahi is already disabled is unfortunately not possible.
The new upped interface might have completely replaced the nameservers, so
there is a change we can restart avahi again.


I still have to check if we can make the resolvconf case somewhat smarter.
Thinking about it, maybe we should cache the nameserver information in
/var/run/avahi so we can see what actually happend, which would make the check 
a lot smarter :)

And now we're on the subject anyway. One thing that's on my todo to fix is
to not (re)start avahi if it's not configured in the current runlevel..

> | - debian/patches/03_foreground-console.patch: Restrict access to |
> privileged Avahi dbus functions to console users.
> 
> Ubuntu specific, you can ignore this unless you want to move to
> libpam-foreground in Debian.

Don't think we will.. We might, but otoh PolicyKit is coming which might be a
more complete solution for these kind of issues...

> | - kubuntu_03_fix_duplicate_entries_in_menu.patch: Fix duplicate menu entry
> |   for avahi-discover. (Forwarded upstream: http://avahi.org/ticket/135)
> 
> I recommend to fix this in Debian, too, I reported the patch upstream
> (see URL above).

Good catch. The only thing i'm unsure about here is that it's now places in the
Utility category, which makes it end up in Accesoires in gnome. While previous
it was in the System tools menu.

As always, thanks for these mails Martin!

  Sjoerd
-- 
God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
		-- Kronecker