Avahi Receiving, but not Broadcasting
I recently installed Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS on an old windows box (Pentium 4 era) to set up some home server stuff (file sharing, web server etc). I've successfully installed Netatalk and LAMP, and I can access both services using the server ip address.
I installed Avahi, but the other computers still cannot see the advertised services. What's weird is that sometimes I can see other Bonjour services from the Ubuntu box using avahi-browse, and sometimes I cannot (I don't have any idea why, or what it could be correlated with).
Notes: Apollo is the server, Morpheus is a MacBook (10.7.1), and Icarus is an iPod(4.3.2). Apollo is connected by ethernet to the router, all other computers are on WiFi.
Always show up:
Code:
+ eth0 IPv4 Apollo Apple File Sharing local
+ eth0 IPv4 Apollo _device-info._tcp local
+ eth0 IPv4 Apollo Web Site local
+ eth0 IPv4 Apollo SSH Remote Terminal local
+ eth0 IPv4 Apollo [00:0f:9f:d7:ba:2b] Workstation local
Sometimes show up:
Code:
+ eth0 IPv4 Morpheus Apple File Sharing local
+ eth0 IPv4 Morpheus SSH Remote Terminal local
+ eth0 IPv4 Icarus SSH Remote Terminal local
etc...
Kicker: I can still use the mdns names of the other computers (i.e. ssh user@Morpheus works from Apollo) even when Avahi can't see them. This doesn't work the other way around though (i.e.. ssh user@Apollo doesn't work from Morpheus).
It seems that the server can receive the broadcasts well enough, but has trouble broadcasting itself? The problem is still there when I connect my laptop to the router directly by ethernet, so it doesn't seem to be a wireless broadcast issue... I am quite stumped; any help would be greatly appreciated.
Relevant configuration files are included below.
nsswitch.conf looks like this:
Code:
passwd: compat
group: compat
shadow: compat
hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4 mdns
networks: files
protocols: db files
services: db files
ethers: db files
rpc: db files
netgroup: nis
avahi.conf looks like this:
Code:
[server]
host-name=Apollo
#domain-name=local
#browse-domains=0pointer.de, zeroconf.org
use-ipv4=yes
use-ipv6=no
#allow-interfaces=eth0
#deny-interfaces=eth1
#check-response-ttl=no
#use-iff-running=no
#enable-dbus=yes
#disallow-other-stacks=no
#allow-point-to-point=no
[wide-area]
enable-wide-area=no
[publish]
#disable-publishing=no
#disable-user-service-publishing=no
#add-service-cookie=no
#publish-addresses=yes
#publish-hinfo=yes
#publish-workstation=yes
#publish-domain=yes
#publish-dns-servers=192.168.50.1, 192.168.50.2
#publish-resolv-conf-dns-servers=yes
#publish-aaaa-on-ipv4=yes
#publish-a-on-ipv6=no
[reflector]
#enable-reflector=no
#reflect-ipv=no
[rlimits]
#rlimit-as=
rlimit-core=0
rlimit-data=4194304
rlimit-fsize=0
rlimit-nofile=300
rlimit-stack=4194304
rlimit-nproc=3
afpd.service looks like this:
Code:
<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?><!--*-nxml-*-->
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
<name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
<service>
<type>_afpovertcp._tcp</type>
<port>548</port>
</service>
<service>
<type>_device-info._tcp</type>
<port>0</port>
<txt-record>model=Xserve</txt-record>
</service>
<service>
<type>_http._tcp</type>
<port>80</port>
</service>
<service>
<type>_ssh._tcp</type>
<port>22</port>
</service>
</service-group>
The logs don't show anything weird (at least to me):
Code:
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Found user 'avahi' (UID 107) and group 'avahi' (GID 115).
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Successfully dropped root privileges.
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: avahi-daemon 0.6.25 starting up.
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Successfully called chroot().
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Successfully dropped remaining capabilities.
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Loading service file /services/afpd.service.
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Loading new static hostname router.local.
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Joining mDNS multicast group on interface eth0.IPv4 with address 192.168.2.43.
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: New relevant interface eth0.IPv4 for mDNS.
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Network interface enumeration completed.
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Registering new address record for fe80::20f:9fff:fed7:ba2b on eth0.*.
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Registering new address record for 192.168.2.43 on eth0.IPv4.
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Registering HINFO record with values 'I686'/'LINUX'.
Oct 9 18:25:55 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Server startup complete. Host name is Apollo.local. Local service cookie is 2855093504.
Oct 9 18:25:56 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Service "Apollo" (/services/afpd.service) successfully established.
Oct 9 18:25:56 Apollo avahi-daemon[2101]: Static host name "router.local" successfully established.
eth0 configuration:
Code:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0f:9f:d7:ba:2b
inet addr:192.168.2.43 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20f:9fff:fed7:ba2b/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:7862 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:5502 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:1
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:956746 (956.7 KB) TX bytes:2810284 (2.8 MB)
Interrupt:21 Base address:0xd800
Re: Avahi Receiving, but not Broadcasting
Code:
inet addr:192.168.2.43 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
Hi kaivanes, I see that the server 'lives' on the 192.168.2.0 network. Are the other machines in the same network? May be the router creates a different network for its WiFi connections.
Just a thought,
Regards.
Re: Avahi Receiving, but not Broadcasting
Sadly not; they are all on the .2 subnet :(
That is the kind of thing that I would overlook though :p
Re: Avahi Receiving, but not Broadcasting
Does the service/daemon goes down? or Is it still up but broadcasting?
Could you check next time you loose Apollo?
Code:
$ ps aux | grep avahi
Regards.
Re: Avahi Receiving, but not Broadcasting
The Avahi Daemon does appear to be running:
Code:
XXXXX@Apollo:~$ ps aux | grep avahi
avahi 13786 0.6 0.1 2928 1588 ? S 11:25 0:00 avahi-daemon: running [Apollo.local]
avahi 13787 0.0 0.0 2928 548 ? Ss 11:25 0:00 avahi-daemon: chroot helper
XXXX 13789 0.0 0.0 3324 792 pts/0 S+ 11:25 0:00 grep --color=auto avahi
Additionally, the machine seems to be able to broadcast (at least for ping)... I'm starting to think that this is just a symptom of the awful router/modem combo that Bell gave us. ](*,)
