How do I send hostname info to Airport DNS from Linux?

Question

My router is an Airport Extreme. I can easily ssh to other OS X machines via hostname.local (example1.local, exmaple2.local, etc) once it is set in in the preferences.

But despite the fact that my Ubuntu machine is connected, it's hostname doesn't seem to be visible to other machines on my LAN. I can connect via LAN ip. I can also add it's ip manually to my /etc/hosts file and that works fine. but how do I get it to dynamically broadcast it's hostname the way my OS X machines do?

I don't really understand how my OS X machines are recognizing one another's .local hostnames, is the the router providing DNS?

Please take a minute to read our [faq]. This isn't on topic here. — MDMarra, Feb 08 '13 at 03:10

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 08 '13 at 03:09

3

The router isn't providing DNS. Your Macs can all see each other because they use mDNS(Bonjour) for local name resolution.

You can install and configure Ahavi on your Ubuntu machine if you want it to work the same way, or you can set up an actual DNS server.

answered Feb 08 '13 at 03:09

MDMarra

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thank you! and sorry about off topic, i now see that home networking questions should be asked on the superuser site. – But those new buttons though.. Feb 18 '13 at 03:10

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 08 '13 at 03:09

You do not need to register your host name with the Airport Extreme in order to get its name recognized under the .local domain. You just need to be running a zeroconf stack on your computer. In particular for Ubuntu, just make sure the "avahi-daemon" package is installed and that Avahi is running (which it will be by default if the package is installed).

How do I send hostname info to Airport DNS from Linux?

2 Answers2