Disabling the Avahi daemon

The Avahi daemon is present as default and wiill automatically discovers network resources and get connected to it .

Avahi functions:

Assign an IP address automatically even without the presence of a DHCP server.

Act as DNS (each machine is accessible by the name nameMachine.local).

Publish services and facilitates access to these services (the local network machines are warned of the pening and closing up a service, facilitating the sharing of files, printers, etc..

Avahi is an implementation of Zeroconf protocol compatible with Apple services.

Constraints when using Avahi :

It use some memory (about 248 kb).

It opens 2 network ports (UDP 32768 and 5353).

It has been reported in some cases to decrease network performance.

Ubuntu 7.04

If there is no use for Avahi and you want to disable,
even if you uncheck in the list of services System Menu /Administration/ Services, it will continue to start!

To disable it, you must edit the file /etc/default/ avahi-daemon as root:

sudo gedit /etc/default/avahi-daemon

Change the line: AVAHI_DAEMON_START = 1
to: AVAHI_DAEMON_START = 0

Reboot your system and the problem should be solve.
Note that:
The command sudo update-rc.d-f avahi-daemon remove is not enough to disable the Avahi.

Ubuntu 7.10

Go to the following list of services to disable Avahi:
System Menu /Administration/ Services

Under Debian systems

The name of daemon may be different but the method remain the same for Debian-based systems

sudo update-rc.d -f avahi-daemon remove

To recreate the used links

sudo update-rc.d avahi-daemon defaults