| 23 | | == Details == |
| 24 | | Avahi implements the [http://www.dns-sd.org/ DNS-SD] over [http://www.multicastdns.org/ Multicast DNS]. It uses [http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/dbus D-BUS] to communicate from the application to the system daemon. A system daemon is used to coordinate application efforts in caching replies, necessary to reduce noise on networks generated by protocols such as MDNS. The goals of this project are for implementation into the GNOME desktop, however that does not stop it from being used by any other applications or desktop environments as long as you have a working installation of dbus, which most modern distributions now come with by default. |
| 25 | | |
| 26 | | == Why == |
| 27 | | Although other implementations exist (such as Howl), none exist that use fully open and free GPL-compatible code. The howl library is hindered by the APSL among other things, which makes it undesirable to some people, especially distributions such as Debian which has strict free software guidelines. |
| 28 | | |
| 29 | | == Current Status == |
| 30 | | The Avahi mDNS responder is now feature complete implementing all MUSTs and the majority of the SHOULDs of the mDNS RFC. It passes all (except a questionable one) tests in the Apple Bonjour conformance test suite. In addition it supports some nifty things that have never been seen elsewhere like correct mDNS reflection accross LAN segments. The mDNS responder is implemented as a C library ("avahi-core") which is embeddable into other applications. The daemon itself including a DBUS API is complete, as well as a C client wrapper around this API. |
| 31 | | |
| 32 | | == Features == |
| 33 | | * Licensed under LGPL |
| 34 | | * IPv4 and IPv6 support |
| 35 | | * DBUS interface |
| 36 | | * Drops all priviliges and runs as user "avahi" |
| 37 | | * chroot() support |
| 38 | | * Embeddable mDNS stack (i.e. mDNS stack available as library) |
| 39 | | * Support for loading static service definitions from XML fragments |
| 40 | | * Interface to GLIBC NSS using [http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/nss-mdns/ nss-mdns] |
| 41 | | * Ability to reflect mDNS traffic between multiple subnets |
| 42 | | * Ability to configure a unicast DNS server automatically from server data published on the LAN |
| 43 | | * Wide area DNS-SD support (read-only for now) |
| 44 | | * Compatibility libraries implementing a subset of the HOWL and Apple Bonjour APIs |
| 45 | | |
| 46 | | |
| 47 | | [wiki:DownloadAvahi Download Avahi] |
| 48 | | |
| 49 | | [wiki:AvahiCommunity Avahi Community] |
| 50 | | |
| 51 | | [wiki:Avah4users Avahi for the Users] |
| 52 | | |
| 53 | | [wiki:Avahi4Developpers Avahi for the Developpers] |
| 54 | | |
| 55 | | |
| 56 | | |
