Avoiding avahi

[miket]

Some time ago I noticed a new feature creep into net-print/hplip: an "oh so helpful" network-device-discovery service. As a result, hplip started depending on net-dns/avahi.

When I read about it, I was Not Thrilled about what avahi does: it is an implementation of mDNS, a service which happily makes a host respond to random other hosts on the LAN wanting to know that host's IP address. When that host being queried is my laptop, which I often enough take into other people's networks, that kind of discoverability is not something I want.

Suffice it to say, but I No Not Want avahi. As if I weren't already against installing it, I observe that its author also wrote certain (ahem) init and audio-transport systems. I'll just be content discovering the IP addresses of printers on my own, thank you.

So now the problem. When confronted with the avahi-using versions of hplip, I masked the newer hplip ebuilds to stick with version 3.20.6-r1. That one has a hard dependency on automake 1.13, which is scheduled to go away. This pushes me to update.

If I do an easy thing like fake out Portage by adding avahi to package.provided or set up a modified hplip ebuild in my local overlay, my bet is that hplip would fail to run--or even build--with avahi missing. I suppose I could build avahi but not start the daemon, but then hplip might still complain.

I suspect that the hplip upstream went through a lot of effort to implement a much requested printer-discovery feature, so I'm doubtful they'd be fast to offer a way to circumvent it. Is there a good way for me to avoid avahi and still use newer versions of hplip? Am I going to end up needing to patch the hplip source? Is there an avahi-faker I could use? (This would never respond to queries on the network while consistently telling hplip that it finds no printers.)

[dr_wulsen]

I feel your frustration. I really dislike being forced to use "oh-so-futuristic-five-layers-abstracted-*kit" packages.
I prefer to rip out all stuff not necessary and run on the minimum required.

Workarounds:

German ubuntuusers wiki says:

[Goverp]

I run hplip without avahi. Just specify USE="-snmp" - unless you desperately need snmp, that is.
_________________
Greybeard

[NeddySeagoon]

miket,

Without avahi you don't get auto printer discovery but who cares?
A printer is like a server, it should have a static IP.
Once that's set up it just works.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[miket]

[Goverp]

[miket]

So then I'll give it a go with USE=-snmp and see if I can still print

[figueroa]

Excellent. I set the following in /etc/portage/package.use:

[miket]

[figueroa]

Here is the meat of my "eix hplip" output:

[dr_wulsen]

IPP(S) should work even better. Since IPP(S) goes both ways, you can see the status of your jobs and more status info than with LPD, so the internet says.
I do have a printer on my network, my CUPS url to it is simply

[charles17]

[Goverp]

FWIW I print to an hplip printer over the network - my printer is attached to a Raspberry Pi (running Arch). It runs hplip. I have a printer on my desktop machine called RawRemote, configured in CUPS as
ipp://foo:631/printers/RAW_PRINTER
using the hpcups 3.22.2 driver for a hp cp1700 colour ink jet.
_________________
Greybeard

[miket]

Ahh, bigger sigh.

The really nice thing about hplip is that it gives a quick way to see detailed status of my HP printer, especially to see ink levels and detailed status settings. It's never been terribly important to me for installing printers, especially since I always set up the printer's address in my DNS. It's a real bother that it insists on going through snmp to talk to an existing printer. I call that a huge design flaw. As I've noted, CUPS has no problems in reaching the printer. I may just have to get rid of hplip.

[Goverp]

[miket]