Multicast DNS & the ".local" domain

[Felipe Alfaro Solana]

On Nov 11, 2004, at 20:09, Kyrre Ness Sjobak wrote:

> tor, 11.11.2004 kl. 18.54 skrev Felipe Alfaro Solana:
>> Short question: Does Fedora Core 3 support multicast DNS name
>> resolution for the ".local" domain?
>>
>> Long: I can resolv my Linux hostname from my Mac OS X computer, but my
>> Linux box can't resolve my Mac OS X hostname.
>>
>> Looking at the network traffic, Mac OS X name queries for the ".local"
>> domain do send mDNS traffic to the multicast mDNS address. Linux
>> queries for the ".local" domain go against my ISP DNS server.
>
> So that is what "mDNS" stands for. What is it? Where can i find
> documentation? Simple, easy-to-understand explanations? Does it mean
> that i can name my computer "kyrre.local" and it will automatically be
> discovered and resolved on the LAN?

mDNS is a piece of Apple´s Rendezvous technology. There others are 
automatic link-local IPv4 address allocation and service discovery. 
Fedora Core 3 already has support for the multicast DNS responder part 
of Rendezvous, in form of the ¨howl¨package (see 
http://www.porchdogsoft.com/products/howl).

Also, take a look at http://developer.apple.com/macosx/rendezvous

The problem I'm having is that Linux mDNSResponder service works pretty 
well: when a Mac OS X computer asks mDNSResponder, it does. What I'm 
unable to achieve is just the opposite: make glibc's resolver use 
multicast DNS to resolve queries for the ".local" domain. It seems, 
however, that both SUSE and Gentoo have patches to make this work, and 
I wanted to know why Fedora does not.