resolving .local addresses

[sktsee]

On Fri, 2009-06-26 at 22:42 -0700, Bill Moseley wrote:
> I'm moving to zeronconf discovery for my host names on the LAN.
> 
> I added search paths for my domain and also "local".
> 
> $ cat /etc/resolv.conf 
> domain hank.org
> search hank.org local
> nameserver 192.168.1.1
> 
> "bumby2" has a zeroconf host name bumby2.local, so with the above I
> see:
> 
> $ host -v bumby2
> Trying "bumby2.hank.org"
> Trying "bumby2.local"
> Trying "bumby2"
> Host bumby2 not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
> Received 99 bytes from 192.168.1.1#53 in 17 ms
> 
> Yet,
> 
> $ ping bumby2.local
> PING bumby2.local (192.168.1.5) 56(84) bytes of data.
> 64 bytes from bumby2.local (192.168.1.5): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.68
> ms
> 
> $ cat /etc/nsswitch.conf  | grep hosts
> hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
> 
> Tried changing the order, but no luck.  Anyone know if I can get host
> names qualified with .local?
> 
> 
/etc/default/avahi-daemon has the following:
# 1 = Try to detect unicast dns servers that serve .local and disable
#avahi in  that case, 0 = Don't try to detect .local unicast dns
#servers, can cause troubles on misconfigured networks

AVAHI_DAEMON_DETECT_LOCAL=1

I'm not sure since I don't use avahi, but judging from the above info,
it looks like avahi-daemon will disable itself by default if it detects
that there's a dns server on the LAN serving .local. Perhaps setting the
variable to 0 would work.

You might also look into avahi-dnsconfd if you haven't already.

$ apt-cache show avahi-dnsconfd
...
This tool listens on the network for announced DNS servers and passes
them to resolvconf so it can use them. This is very useful on
autoconfigured IPv6 networks.

HTH

-- 
sktsee