[avahi] FW: Resolve Local Hostnames using Aavhi

[John Frankish]

> > > On 22/05/2011 18:08, John Frankish wrote:
> > > 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
> > > hosts:      files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns
> > >
> Hi John,
> > 
> > I believe you need the following line in /etc/nsswitch.conf :
> > 
> > hosts:      files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
> > 
> > as described in the Documentation section at 
> > http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/nss-mdns/
> > 
> > Even though it says mdns4_minimal resolves .local addresses, it also 
> > says it resolves only IPV4LL addresses (169.254.x.x), which to me 
> > sounds like it doesn't resolve addresses from the private IPv4 range..
> > 
> > Don't know if it's just not formulated well or if that's really the 
> > case. I'd give it a shot though.
> > 
> Thanks.
>
> Indeed, the nss-mdns documentation does say that (I'd been looking at the avahi documentation).
>
> However, when I change nsswitch to:
> files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4 or even files mdns4 [NOTFOUND=return] dns
>
> The situation remains the same, i.e. avahi-resolve can find a machine by hostname, but ping cannot.

I double-checked that the kernel supports ip multicast and /etc/nsswitch.conf is as per the nss-mdns documentation.

Are there other settings I need to modify - /etc/hosts, /etc/resolv.conf - or is there any trouble-shooting I can try?