[avahi] avahi not functioning on Slackware 12.2

[Steve]

(Ha ha, maybe I'll get the list mailing address right this time...)

Hello!  I apologise if you've seen me ask the same question in the avahi
irc channel, but I'm still stuck and hopefully someone here could help me
out.  I'll try to give as much information as possible.

Most likely this isn't a problem with avahi itself, but since I'm not too
familar with avahi's internals, I thought I'd ask here.

On Slackware 12.1, avahi-0.6.22 through to avahi-0.6.24 work fine, and as
expected.

However, on Slackware 12.2, I can't browse any services, and it seems I
can't resolve any .local hostnames.  Running with --debug, the
avahi-daemon starts up fine, loads services for sftp, and waits; syslog
reports that the daemon has picked up the new interface and registers it;
but when I use avahi-discover, it's empty; avahi-browse seems to hang
waiting for a response, as does avahi-resolve-*.

Since 0.6.24 works fine with Slackware 12.1, I'm trying to track down what
has changed which prevents avahi from working on 12.2. (And it's not just
me, I've had a few other people try avahi-0.6.24 on a fresh Slack 12.2
install, with the same result as me. :)

computy.local is the host/server machine. multicast is on.


Using avahi-resolve-host-name, the avahi-daemon reports:

dbus-protocol.c: interface=org.freedesktop.Avahi.Server, path=/,
member=GetAPIVersion
dbus-protocol.c: interface=org.freedesktop.Avahi.Server, path=/,
member=GetState
dbus-protocol.c: interface=org.freedesktop.Avahi.Server, path=/,
member=GetVersionString
dbus-protocol.c: interface=org.freedesktop.Avahi.Server, path=/,
member=GetHostNameFqdn
dbus-protocol.c: interface=org.freedesktop.Avahi.Server, path=/,
member=HostNameResolverNew

But no response is given, and avahi-resolve-host-name continues to wait.

Strangely (or not strangely), a `dig` to avahi returns an IP:

$ dig -p 5353 @224.0.0.251 computy.local
<snip>
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;computy.local.                 IN      A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
computy.local.          10      IN      A       192.168.2.3

If i use tcpdump to see what's going on when I run
avahi-resolve-host-name, I get:

20:29:21.804711 IP 192.168.2.3.5353 > 224.0.0.251.5353: 0 [2q] A (QM)?
computy.local. AAAA (QM)? computy.local. (37)
20:29:21.804995 IP 192.168.2.3.5353 > 224.0.0.251.5353: 0*- [0q] 2/0/0
(Cache flush) AAAA[|domain]
20:29:22.812708 IP 192.168.2.3.5353 > 224.0.0.251.5353: 0 [2a] [2q] A
(QM)? computy.local. AAAA (QM)? computy.local. (81)

Etc, and it doesn't seem like an IP is returned.  I've tried looking
through some of the documentation, and poked around on the lists, but i
can't seem to find any hints.

Could this be a dbus problem?

When i start the avahi-daemon with the --debug, i get:

dbus-service-browser.c: interface=org.freedesktop.DBus.Introspectable,
path=/Client1/ServiceBrowser1, member=Introspect
chroot.c: chroot() helper got command 08
<snip>

Etc, etc. But this may be a different matter?, and even with --no-chroot,
it still does not work.  I've tried downgrading the dbus package on
Slackware 12.2 to that of Slackware 12.1, but it did not help.

Any suggestions as to what else may be causing this strange problem?  Any
help appreciated!  :)

-- 
-= Steve =-



-- 
-= Steve =-