Bug#627357: gnome-desktop-environment: I would like to remove avahi-daemon because mdns slows down PTR lookup

[Karl O. Pinc]

Package: gnome-desktop-environment
Version: 1:2.30+7
Severity: wishlist

Alternate subject: Make gnome-user-share optional

Hi,

gnome-desktop-environment depends on gnome-user-share which,
eventually, depends on avahi-daemon.  MDNS greatly slows down reverse
dns (PTR) lookups when there is no PTR row in DNS, which is bad for
VPNs that use RFC1918 addresses and other sorts of places where it's
unlikely that they'll be a reverse lookup available via DNS.  (It
turns out that some of www.google.com does not have PTR rows so
ping-ing without -n is strange.)

So, I'd like to be able to remove avahi-daemon by removing
gnome-user-share but can't without either removing all of gnome or
manually running "aptitude unmarkauto" on all the dependencies of
gnome-desktop-environment.  I might be willing to do the latter but
I'd miss out on new gnome goodies in the next debian release.
(I don't run the desktop but like having the apps installed.)

I could use the equivs package to fake out apt but it seems more
appropriate that you do this and alter the depenedences of
gnome-desktop-environment so that there is a new fake package that
satisfies the gnome-user-share requirement.

Or maybe you can come up with another way to avoid depending on
avahi-daemon.

Meanwhile the workaround I've used is to change the 'hosts:' line in
/etc/nsswitch.conf to disable mdns and to change /etc/rd2.d/ so that
avahi-daemon is not started. (mv S04avahi-daemon K04avahi-daemon;
innserv) This is not entirely satisfactory because it leaves
avahi-daemon installed and means there's more config file cruft to
deal with when upgrading to the next stable release and will break
anything else I happen to install that requires avahi-daemon.

Thanks for listening.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0.1
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages gnome-desktop-environment depends on:
ii  alacarte                     0.13.2-1    easy GNOME menu editing tool
ii  baobab                       2.30.0-2    GNOME disk usage analyzer
ii  brasero                      2.30.3-2    CD/DVD burning application for GNO
ii  cheese                       2.30.1-2    A tool to take pictures and videos
ii  deskbar-applet               2.32.0-1    universal search and navigation ba
ii  ekiga                        3.2.7-2     H.323 and SIP compatible VoIP clie
ii  empathy                      2.30.3-1    GNOME multi-protocol chat and call
ii  fast-user-switch-applet      2.24.0-6    Applet for the GNOME panel providi
ii  gcalctool                    5.30.2-2    GNOME desktop calculator
ii  gconf-editor                 2.30.0-2    An editor for the GConf configurat
ii  gdm                          2.20.11-4   GNOME Display Manager
ii  gksu                         2.0.2-5     graphical frontend to su
ii  gnome-backgrounds            2.32.0-1    a set of backgrounds packaged with
ii  gnome-bluetooth              2.30.0-2    GNOME Bluetooth tools
ii  gnome-core                   1:2.30+7    The GNOME Desktop Environment -- e
ii  gnome-dictionary             2.30.0-2    GNOME dictionary application
ii  gnome-media                  2.30.0-1    GNOME media utilities
ii  gnome-netstatus-applet       2.28.1-1    Network status applet for GNOME
ii  gnome-nettool                2.30.0-3    network information tool for GNOME
ii  gnome-screenshot             2.30.0-2    screenshot application for GNOME
ii  gnome-search-tool            2.30.0-2    GNOME tool to search files
ii  gnome-system-log             2.30.0-2    system log viewer for GNOME
ii  gnome-system-monitor         2.28.1-1    Process viewer and system resource
ii  gnome-system-tools           2.30.2-2    Cross-platform configuration utili
ii  gnome-user-share             2.30.1-1    User level public file sharing via
ii  gstreamer0.10-tools          0.10.30-1   Tools for use with GStreamer
ii  gucharmap                    1:2.30.3-1  Unicode character picker and font 
ii  gvfs-bin                     1.6.4-3     userspace virtual filesystem - bin
ii  hamster-applet               2.30.2-3    time tracking applet for GNOME
ii  libgnome2-perl               1.042-2     Perl interface to the GNOME librar
ii  nautilus-sendto              2.28.4-2+b1 integrates Evolution and Pidgin in
ii  remmina                      0.8.3-1     remote desktop client for GNOME de
ii  seahorse                     2.30.1-2    GNOME front end for GnuPG
ii  seahorse-plugins             2.30.1-3    seahorse plugins and utilities for
ii  sound-juicer                 2.28.2-3    GNOME CD Ripper
ii  totem-plugins                2.30.2-6    Plugins for the Totem media player
ii  vinagre                      2.30.3-1    remote desktop client for the GNOM
ii  vino                         2.28.2-2    VNC server for GNOME
ii  xdg-user-dirs-gtk            0.8-1       tool to manage well known user dir
ii  zenity                       2.30.0-1    Display graphical dialog boxes fro

Versions of packages gnome-desktop-environment recommends:
ii  gnome-accessibility           1:2.30+7   The GNOME desktop environment -- a
ii  gnome-games                   1:2.30.2-2 games for the GNOME desktop

Versions of packages gnome-desktop-environment suggests:
pn  gnome-dbg                     <none>     (no description available)

-- no debconf information