[conspire] Multiple versions of avahi ???

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ken Bernard (kenbernard at gmail.com):

> I am trying to install a new HP officejet multifunction, it is
> connected to my small home network by Ethernet. On the computer
> running Fedora 9 (which is an upgrade from Fedora 7) when I try to
> install the hplip software hp recommends for Linux I am getting some
> difficulties.

I notice you're using _apt-get_ on _Fedora_.  You might not want to hear
this right now, but I have my doubts about whether the port of apt to
RPM that you're obviously using is really a good long-term bet.  My
understanding is that it was a kludge by the Conectiva folks (of Brazil)
who were subsequently emborged into Mandrakesoft to create "Mandriva" --
which is neither here nor there in the current context except to suggest
that it's probably in not the mainstream for Fedora.  People who incline
that way seem to uniformly recommend using yum (with or without the
yumex front-end).

Anyway, even on Debian/*buntu, weird package problems are not 
unknown.  You can sometimes cluebat the system in some way or other;
e.g., you could fetch some relevant packages manually and do 
"dpkg -i pkg1 pkg2" (or in this case, I guess "rpm -Uvh pkg1 pkg2", or 
whatever), after which apt will often say "Oh, _right, then!  I guess
there's not a problem after all."

However, on the specifics of your case, I'm afraid we don't have enough
information to know why a bunch of libs are uninstallable.  Might be
that you've specified some weird repositories that are not quite
compatible with the rest of your system, or something like that.

> First the hplip won't install because it depends on cups-devel.

WTF?  Not your fault in any way, but it seems really bizarre that a
printing/scaning/faxing package should require a _devel_ one as a
dependency.  Devel packages are required when you are going to be
compiling something from source.  What about hplip requires that?

So, I'm sorry that this isn't immediately helpful, but something very
basic about your situation is badly awry, which actually concerns me
more than just your hplip problem.

> What is avahi  ?

You can read about that here:  "ZeroConf" on
http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Network_Other/