[Bug 624043] Re: Avahi needs to be restarted after boot to broadcast netatalk services

[Jussi Sainio]

Ubuntu 12.04, a DHCP configured local network, and the same problem.
Putting lines to rc.local was not clean enough solution for me, so I
investigated this a little bit further. I had following symptoms:

/var/log/boot.log:
 * Starting mDNS/DNS-SD daemon [OK]
 * Stopping mDNS/DNS-SD daemon [OK] 
[...]
 * Starting configure network device [OK]

/var/log/syslog:
Dec 17 14:01:03 riesling avahi: Avahi detected that your currently configured local DNS server serves a domain .local. This is inherently incompatible with Avahi and thus Avahi disabled itself. If you want to use Avahi in this network, please contact your administrator and convince him to use a different DNS domain, since .local should be used exclusively for Zeroconf technology. For more information, see http://avahi.org/wiki/AvahiAndUnicastDotLocal
Dec 17 14:01:03 riesling dhclient: bound to 192.168.3.130 -- renewal in 40304 seconds.

/var/log/upstart/avahi-daemon.log:
Process 857 died: No such process; trying to remove PID file. (/var/run/avahi-daemon//pid)

(Side note: I hate the lack of timestamps in the two log files. Does
anybody know a solution to this?)


While this can be mitigated by disabling the "detect .local" check in /etc/default/avahi-daemon ...:

AVAHI_DAEMON_DETECT_LOCAL=0

...this is a "wrong" (but working) fix, since my network DNS does not
serve .local domain as far as I know. Note that in the logs, the network
device is brought up after trying starting Avahi. This means that the
"detect .local" check is not even done on the actual LAN device, maybe
just on the loopback device or on no network devices at all. If we want
this "detect .local" feature to work (sounds like a good idea on e.g.
mobile zeroconf daemons such as laptops), Avahi daemon must be started
after bringing up the network devices.

One a little bit more kosher way to accomplish this, by patching
/etc/init/avahi-daemon.conf:

start on (filesystem
          and started dbus and net-device-up IFACE!=lo)

Now, the avahi-daemon starts only after the first non-loopback network
device has been brought up and the "detect .local" check should be done
there correctly without failing every time.

(Note: I do not know how avahi-daemon works in a changing network
scenario, e.g. if it runs on a laptop and the laptop changes network
without rebooting. Somebody maybe can test this scenario out and make
the avahi-daemon restart on each net-device-up/down event, if avahi-
daemon does not handle this internally. My setup is a server on a home
network.)

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/624043

Title:
  Avahi needs to be restarted after boot to broadcast netatalk services

Status in “avahi” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  When I boot my server, it doesn't broadcast netatalk services. I have to manually restart avahi with:
    restart avahi-daemon

  Once I do this, the server shows up instantly in the Finder of my Mac.

  The problem is pretty much exactly the same as reported by the person here:
    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1482573
  The only difference is that the person here fixed it by installing packages from Debian Testing, which is something I'm wary of.

  
  I added a file /etc/avahi/services/afpd.service, with the following contents:
  <?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?><!--*-nxml-*-->
  <!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
  <service-group>
  <name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
  <service>
  <type>_afpovertcp._tcp</type>
  <port>548</port>
  </service>
  <service>
  <type>_device-info._tcp</type>
  <port>0</port>
  <txt-record>model=Xserve</txt-record>
  </service>
  </service-group>

  And there is no .local domain on my network that is causing problems
  with avahi starting.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
  Package: avahi-daemon 0.6.25-1ubuntu6
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-24.41-generic 2.6.32.15+drm33.5
  Uname: Linux 2.6.32-24-generic x86_64
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Wed Aug 25 09:42:25 2010
  ProcEnviron:
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: avahi

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