Re: [gpsd-dev] Draft Stratum 1 Microserver HOWTO is up

[Paul Fertser]

On Sun, May 22, 2016 at 04:44:33PM -0400, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Paul Fertser <address@hidden>:
> > Host name lookup on common GNU/Linux systems goes through libnss and
> > so the actual precondition for the above command to work is that the
> > "hosts" line in /etc/nsswitch.conf has mdns[_minimal] before "dns"
> > (mdns4[_minimal] might work too if the LAN is not IPv6-only). I do not
> > think it needs avahi-daemon running since the mDNS name resolution
> > doesn't need to be mutual.
> 
> Phil and I tried this case, quite accidentally. He doesn't like
> zeroconf (considers it a security risk) so he didn't have avahi-daemon
> installed on his host.  Discovery failed until he fixed that.

I can explain it like this:

$ apt-cache show avahi-daemon
Package: avahi-daemon
[...snip...]
Recommends: libnss-mdns
...

But not everyone installs "Recommends" by default. Suggesting
avahi-daemon to those needing libnss-mdns would be certainly a
misnomer ;)

> > I have an alternative proposal for reliable address discovery, but I'm
> > not sure you'll like it:
> 
> That is way, *way* off in the weeds for the intended audience

I understand but I still felt like sharing this nifty trick for the ML
subscribers, hope you do not mind it.

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