Points for BoF discussion by TrentLloyd(Lathiat)

So this spec has grown, and is reaching a fair bit out, but I think the following points need to be focussed

• Moving avahi into main [deps libdaemon]
• Determining / deciding to evaluate possible IPv4-LL solutions (zeroconf, network-manager)
  • - Obviously zeroconf has been shown to have possible issues at UBZ, need to investigate actual cause and possible solutions
• Shipping Avahi by Default (but disabled)
• Exposing a UI to turn it on
  • - How/where/what/why? UI at all? would be nice to be an easy tick option
• Moving libnss-mdns into main
  • - Installing by default - Shipping on by default
• Configuring as many programs as possible to use Avahi, including with howl and bonjour compat layers

User Interface Requirements

• Various applications need to be extended to support Avahi. Good examples would be gnome-vfs (for nautilus), gaim, muine and cups. I (TrentLloyd) plan to do this work where possible for upstream.

• GnomeMeeting in CVS supports service discovery, using Avahi instead of Howl with a patch by SebastienEstienne. Ubuntu cannot use howl due to various licensing problems.

• service-discovery-applet : allows to quickly access zeroconf services. This applet can also be considerated as a generic GUI to add zeroconf support for client that doesn't support it yet. (eg: it can browse for Zeroconf Web servers and launch firefox with the good URL).

Corporate Users

The zeroconf technology would be a great addition to UbuntuForSmallBusinesses and SmallBusinessServer.

• The common use case is small business from 5 to 20 workstations and 1 or 2 servers.
• John install his Ubuntu 4 SBS server, and create the different user accounts.
• Then John wants to install the workstations, he starts the computer with a Ubuntu Cd
• The install cd detects the apt-proxy (through zeroconf)
• The installation is over, and Marc wants to login, the kerberos server is detected
• Marc wants to write a mail, he starts evolution: smtp, imap, ldap, webcal all configured throught zeroconf
• Marc wants to call its friend to tell him how great is zeroconf, he starts gnomemeeting that automatically detects asterix (Pabx) and route the call.
• John's firm is getting bigger, he needs to add a new server for fault tolerance: he starts his brand new Ubuntu 4 SBS server, it detects that there is already one Ubuntu 4 SBS servers and automatically replicates its configuration.