Do I need avahi?

David Beveridge bevhost at gmail.com
Mon Jul 29 00:42:32 UTC 2013


On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 7:41 AM, lee <lee at yun.yagibdah.de> wrote:
> Joe Zeff <joe at zeff.us> writes:
>
>> On 07/28/2013 08:03 AM, lee wrote:
>>> However, when I look at online dictionaries, they say that "disabled"
>>> refers to people the abilities of which are somehow limited, so that
>>> word won't be applicable here at all.  Services are not people, and it
>>> is a bad idea to use misleading terms like this.
>>
>> In English, words often have more than one meaning, depending on
>> context.  In a computer context, the word means that something has
>> been turned off and isn't available for use.
>
> That's exactly what I mean.  That something is _not_ turned off and
> still available for use _despite_ it has been disabled, then that is a
> bug.
>
> I'm not a native English speaker, that's why I referred to dictionaries.
>
>> When you use systemctl to disable a service, you're telling it not to
>> start the service at boot, although other services can later start it.
>> If you mask the service, it's completely unavailable until you reverse
>> the process.
>
> Yes, so why don't they use 'disable' to disable something rather than
> "masking" it so it isn't started during booting?
>
>
> Do the native English speakers here agree that 'disable' means to turn
> something off so it's not available for use?  If so, I'll make a bug
> report about this.

disabled means that something is not "able" to operate at all. (incapable)
(ie disable is the reverse of able, eg I am able to do something)
masking is the action of hiding something, It may still operate, but
you cannot see it.
(ie If you wear a mask people cannot see your face, this is similar to
masquerading in iptables, where the public Internet see only the
public address, not the private one hiding behind the mask.)

dave


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