[avahi] Multicast DNS and the Unicast .local Domain

[Aldrin Martoq]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 1:19 PM, Carsten Strotmann<carsten at strotmann.de> wrote:
> I stumbled over the topic I describe below when I updated an Ubuntu
> System from Version 8.04 tro 9.04. Avahi refused to start because I have
> a unicast ".local" domain in my network(s).
> This behavior is documented as recommended for distributions in the
> Avahi Wiki at
> http://avahi.org/wiki/AvahiAndUnicastDotLocal
> I think this is a not well thought out decision. It would be a good
> decision if it would detect a "used" unicast ".local" domain, but in my
> case, the ".local" domain is one of many "pseudo" domains that are
> configured as "empty" DNS zones on all resolving DNS Servers on the
> network edge (border to the Internet), to prevent any "pseudo TLD" like
> ".local" to be leaked into the Internet and hitting the Root DNS Server
> System.

I don´t think that your solution is the best for the presented
problem; everyone can´t afford a DNS Server and make the internet
better. If we are really using .local as a standard for LAN
communications, then we should fix the resolv libraries instead.


About avahi behavior, I guess a configurable option like
--skip-dns-check should fix your [unwanted by developers for good
reasons] setup. If such an option doesn´t exist, you have the code and
maybe send a patch.

-- 
Aldrin Martoq
http://aldrin.martoq.cl/