[avahi] Resolve Local Hostnames using Aavhi

[John Frankish]

I have a simple network using a cisco rvs4000 as a router and dhcp server. Unfortunately, the rvs4000 does not have an option to resolve local hostnames and I don't really want to leave a machine on 24h/day running dnsmasq as a dhcp/dns server.

Is there a way to use avahi to resolve local hostnames and to assign hostnames to devices (ps3, internet radio, iphone) using their mac address? I can see the information is there from avahi-browse, but I don't seem to be able to get at it:

$ sudo ping -c2 dslkayak [this is not the local machine]
ping: bad address 'dslkayak'

$ sudo ping -c2 dslkayak.local
ping: bad address 'dslkayak.local'

$ avahi-resolve -n dslkayak.local
dslkayak.local  192.168.1.100

$ cat /etc/nsswitch.conf

passwd:     files
group:      files
shadow:     files

hosts:      files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns
networks:   files

rpc:        files
services:   files