Tom H: 
>>> You can change it by setting "domain-name=something_else" in
>>> "/etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf".

Samuel Sieb: 
>> Although that would immediately make you incompatible with all the devices
>> you're probably wanting to talk to. :-)

On Fri, 2016-11-04 at 23:47 +0200, Tom H wrote: 
> If the ".local" devices that you're connecting to are served by
> regular dns, it's not a problem.

Recently I tried adding a Pixma MG7760 printer to my LAN, and there was
no end of trouble.  Sometimes the Windows and Mac computers found it,
sometimes they didn't, I've only briefly played with Linux drivers for
it (well, select a PPD file that you can download from Canon, and it
prints nicely, but haven't tried the scanner).

It's one of those printers with USB, LAN, WLAN, NFC interfaces.  Most of
that use automatic settings, though there's a plethora of options that
you can change.  And to make things more awkward, it only wants to use
one of those connection types, it doesn't want to be available on your
ethernet LAN and wireless, simultaneously.

It uses some mixture of normal TCP/IP networking and Bonjour, and it
doesn't seem to use both independently.  For example, my DHCP server
automatically gives everything else a name and IP, and puts them into
the local DNS server, as well.  But that doesn't work with this printer
(I have to manually set in a hostname, on my DHCP server).  It gets
assigned an IP, but that's all that happens.  The installable (Mac and
PC) printer software seems to want to use Bonjour to find the printer,
and usually fails (more directly about that next paragraph).  For what
it's worth, it often fails to find the printer when connected via the
USB cable, too.

My understanding, though, of the .local issues is that such devices will
have to be using the 169.254.x.y IP addresses (which they can do, as
devices can have more than one IP, but it's not doing that).  And, for
your other network devices to also have to have a 169.254.x.y addresses
(same conditions as before - they can have those addresses as well as
regular LAN addresses, but they don't).  None of the computers, do
though, because as soon as they get assigned a regular IP, they don't
bother with self-assigning themselves a random link-local address, as
well.  And the equipment won't talk with 169.254.x.y addresses that are
outside of their 192.168.x.y subnets, normally.  So, Bonjour seems to
get left out of the equation.

So, from my point of view, .local isn't automatic, doesn't work, can't
work.

I'd take the printer back, but I needed something that can print onto
DVDs, for work purposes, and it's the only printer I can locally buy
that will do that.  Thanks to all the networking shenanigans, and
awkward Linux compatibility, I did that by creating a picture I want to
print on the disc, copying that to a SD memory card, and printing
directly from that card plugged into the printer.

Gawd but I hate half-baked, and proprietary, consumer equipment.


-- 
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 3.9.10-100.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Jul 14 01:31:27 UTC 2013 x86_64

Boilerplate:  All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is
no point trying to privately email me, I only get to see the messages
posted to the mailing list.

The internet, your opportunity to learn from other peoples' mistakes.


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