I'm having a really strange problem. I have 2 virtual machines running ubuntu 11.4 in VMware player. These virtual machines have a bridged connection to my network. Since they use DHCP it would be more easy to let them talk to each other using hostnames instead of IP addresses.
That is where the it becomes a strange situation.
ping 192.168.0.10 //this is machine 1
ping 192.168.0.11 //this is machine 2
both work like a charm
ping machine1.local
ping machine2.local
work great on their own system. but ping machine1.local on machine 2 results in a "ping: unknown host machine1.local"
After trying and checking everything and getting nothing but the local machine in the avahi-browse, I installed wireshark to get to know what's really going on.
I ran wireshark, and then ran avahi-browse. In wireshark I saw all the responses to the MDNS message AND I GOT machine1.local AND machine2.local!!!
GREAT! but when I turned off wireshark the avahi-browse cache went empty again...
Why is it that when I have wireshark on in the virtual machine, the avahi-daemon gets the MDNS messages, and when I turn it off, the messages get lost again...