Apple, whose OS X Yosemite (10.10) will not even resolve DNS when internet is down ("private networks don't exist"), simply chose the wrong name for something that is basically only used by machines.
Their ".local" is not meant for manual use. They could just as easily have called it ".mdns" or something -- OS X will by default not show it anyway I'm sure. So they have claimed something they were not entitled to and their broken model of network computing is now the foundation of how to do things? * The local DNS server timeout issue is not really an issue; if you didn't want that you shouldn't have chosen .local for mdns. * .local leakage is no different from .home leakage and in this case can be prevented * redirecting local services would require upstream malicious .local to be configured in DNS servers but is directly at odds with the situation in which a _local_ .local DNS server is configured, so can also be solved by only allowing .local to get out if there IS a local .local DNS server * The only real argument that remains is name resolution; automatic changing of host names in cast of conflicts. RFC 6762 notes that "Implementers MAY choose to look up such names concurrently via other mechanisms (e.g., Unicast DNS) and coalesce the results in some fashion. Implementers choosing to do this should be aware of the potential for user confusion when a given name can produce different results depending on external network conditions (such as, but not limited to, which name lookup mechanism responds faster)." Lennart likes to scream about people not listening to the designers; but what does he do? The typical use case of a merged system is when DHCP provides DNS through supplied hostnames, there is no resolution in that sense, at least no standard one. The DHCP set would remain unchanged (and unresolved) while the mDNS set, oblivious to anything happening in unicast DNS, would produce different names where some of them would change, adding new ones to the total set. Those new names would only be resolvable through mDNS. Unless you were talking about a huge network (why would you use multicast in such a system?) the actual prevalence of such conflicts and confusion must be considered low. I think it can be argued that discovery is a much more important aspect of mDNS than resolution because most hardware devices pick MAC-based names and most operating systems also pick randomized names by default. Anything else reeks of configuration, and if you configure, you are not in zeroconf. So there aren't really any reasons that are deal-breaking, and those that exist are caused by mDNS' insistence to use for its automated system a human-meaningful name such as .local, which is a design flaw. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to avahi in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/80900 Title: Avahi daemon prevents resolution of FQDNs ending in ".local" due to false negatives in the detection of ".local" networks Status in avahi package in Ubuntu: Triaged Status in nss-mdns package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Status in avahi package in Debian: New Bug description: Install Kubuntu Feisty Set the ip address to dhcp for eth0 (ethernet port) make sure the host name and domain name are set Hostname computer1 DomainName mydomain.local allow DHCP to assign the IP address Ensure the computer details are registered in DNS for mydomain.local... computer names registered in DNS (FQDN) computer1.mydomain.local computer2.mydomain.local computer3.mydomain.local computer2 and computer3 are both running Kubuntu Dapper and are both using DHCP. if I issue the following comands on computer2 or computer3, it works correctly: ping computer2 (response received - ping good) ping computer3 (response received - ping good) ping computer2.mydomain.local (response received - ping good) ping computer3.mydomain.local (response received - ping good) if i issue the same commands from the feisty box (computer1), these are the results.. ping computer2 (response received - ping good) ping computer3 (response received - ping good) ping computer2.mydomain.local (unknown host) ping computer3.mydomain.local (unknown host) for some reason if you try to ping the fully qualified domain name on feisty, it cant resolve it, yet it can resolve it using both static IP Addressing and DHCP addressing on Dapper. (i set the IP to static as well for the test) Static and DHCP on Dapper works fine. Static and DHCP wont resolve fully qualified domain names on Feisty. (computer1, computer2 and computer 3 are all Kubuntu machines. DNS Server is a Windows 2003 Server (that will be changed a kubuntu server very soon though!) It can resolve the host name only though, and will return the fully qualified domain name in the response. cheers Rod. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/avahi/+bug/80900/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp