Dec 3, 2010

Howto disable the Avahi daemon

The Avahi daemon is to discover any network resources and connect to them.


It's primary roles are:

  • 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 (the local network machines are warned of the opening and closing up a service, facilitating the sharing of files, printers, etc.. )

It is an implementation of Zeroconf protocol compatible with Apple services. Possible drawbacks of 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.




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