On Fri, Jul 05, 2019 at 04:33:42AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote: > Here is your Clarification: I used apt to purge avahi-daemon which > took nsswitch with it,
Let's test this assertion. wooledg:~$ ls -l /etc/nss* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 545 Apr 1 08:58 /etc/nsswitch.conf wooledg:~$ sudo cp /etc/nsswitch.conf /etc/nsswitch.conf.GW-backup [sudo] password for wooledg: wooledg:~$ sudo apt purge avahi-daemon Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: avahi-daemon* libnss-mdns* 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 1 not upgraded. After this operation, 407 kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] (Reading database ... 107764 files and directories currently installed.) Removing libnss-mdns:amd64 (0.14.1-1) ... Removing avahi-daemon (0.7-4+b1) ... Created symlink /run/systemd/system/avahi-daemon.service → /dev/null. Removed /run/systemd/system/avahi-daemon.service. Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.5-2) ... Processing triggers for dbus (1.12.16-1) ... Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.28-10) ... (Reading database ... 107717 files and directories currently installed.) Purging configuration files for avahi-daemon (0.7-4+b1) ... rmdir: failed to remove '/var/run/avahi-daemon': Directory not empty Purging configuration files for libnss-mdns:amd64 (0.14.1-1) ... libnss-mdns.postrm: Checking NSS setup... libnss-mdns.postrm: Removing mdns from NSS setup Processing triggers for dbus (1.12.16-1) ... Processing triggers for systemd (241-5) ... wooledg:~$ ls -l /etc/nss* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 513 Jul 5 08:51 /etc/nsswitch.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 545 Jul 5 08:51 /etc/nsswitch.conf.GW-backup wooledg:~$ diff -u /etc/nsswitch.conf.GW-backup /etc/nsswitch.conf --- /etc/nsswitch.conf.GW-backup 2019-07-05 08:51:38.640595350 -0400 +++ /etc/nsswitch.conf 2019-07-05 08:51:52.812542805 -0400 @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ shadow: compat gshadow: files -hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns +hosts: files dns networks: files protocols: db files So... purging avahi-daemon actually does *touch* the nsswitch.conf file (see the "libnss-mdns.postrm: Removing mdns from NSS setup" message). But it doesn't completely *remove* the file. That would be madness. If your multiple-times-customized Raspbian system's avahi-daemon package or libnss-mdns package completely *removes* the nsswitch.conf file, you should either fix that (if it's one of your customizations that did it), or file a bug report against Raspbian (if it's one of theirs). In any case, the behavior you describe is not what Debian (or any sane operating system) does.
