Avahi

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avahi is a zeroconf service discovery and publishing program. A common use for it is to be able to connect to machines via yourhostname.local within your LAN.

Installation

Kernel

KERNEL Required options

Networking support  --->
   Networking options  --->
     [*]   IP: multicasting

Server

root #emerge --ask net-dns/avahi

Client

root #emerge --ask sys-auth/nss-mdns

Configuration

Server Services

systemd

Enable the server to start whenever systemd thinks it is appropriate:

root #systemctl enable avahi-daemon.service

If you want to use it right away, also start the service:

root #systemctl start avahi-daemon.service

OpenRC

Be sure to add the service to the default runlevel for the server daemon to start on system boot. Do so with the rc-update command:

root #rc-update add avahi-daemon default

Start the service (without restarting) with the rc-service command:

root #rc-service avahi-daemon start

Client Files

Add the appropriate mdns into the hosts line in /etc/nsswitch.conf, An example line looks like:

FILE /etc/nsswitch.conf

hosts:       files mdns_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns

Once this is installed it should be possible to ping the hostname of the machine appending .local. For example:

root #ping hostname.local