[avahi] avahi-daemon stops working after undetermined period of time

[Trent Lloyd]

Brian,

On 12/09/2009, at 1:26 AM, Brian McKee wrote:

> On 11-Sep-09, at 11:56 AM, Brian McKee wrote:
>
>> I'm resurrecting an old thread here.
>>
>> I have a mixed Mac / Linux LAN - all static IP.
>> I'm advertising a couple of services on the Linux boxes.
>> The Macs are obviously advertising themselves as well.
>>
>> Each time avahi-daemon is restarted service discovery etc. all seems
>> to work fine.
>> After about 10 minutes, you can't resolve the host names of the
>> Linux boxes anymore.
>
> What's a good way to test for switch issues?  Can I use netcat or ? to
> prove that out one way or the other?

This whole issue is a tell-tale sign of a broken network device.

Usually it is wireless network cards, but sometimes is also wired and  
switches.

The way to tell is to run tcpdump on a "working" system, if you run a  
query on the originating host and don't see it on the network - then  
it is broken in some way.

But it seems you are describing a slightly reverse issue:

You restart Avahi-daemon on *this* system and it can resolve hostnames  
for 10 minutes and then stops?



The usual issue is you restart Avahi on a particular system and all  
systems can now see that node for 10 minutes, after that time the TTLs  
expire and any queries from other devices for its names or services  
are not seen as the network driver doesn't send the multicast requests  
to Avahi.

Trent