Network service discovery disabled

[Ralph L]

When I connect to my wifi for the Internet, I always get this message:

Network service discovery disabled

Your current network has a .local domain, which is not recommended and incompatable with Avahi network service discovery.  The service has been disabled.

Anybody know what the problem is and how to fix it?

Thanks

[gordintoronto]

This thread:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1877044

suggests it is due to misconfiguration of the DNS servers you are using. Are you using DHCP? What version of Xubuntu? What is the result of the command: cat /etc/resolv.conf

[Ralph L]

Thanks for the reply.
I didn't really understand the web site you suggested. I am using DHCP. The version of xubuntu is 12.04.2. However, this also happens on another computer running ubuntu 12.04.2. Following is the file listing you requested:

ralph@pres:~$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
# Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)
#     DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN
nameserver 127.0.0.1
search wcg200
ralph@pres:~$

Ralph

[gordintoronto]

Sorry, I'm out of my depth on getting rid of the "search wcg200" line. (I am pretty sure that is contributing to the problem.) In any case, I think the problem is caused by your ISP, and, if you have full Internet access, you can just ignore it.

[jdthood]

The top-level domain ".local" is used by Avahi which implements mDNS. Ahahi prints the "Your current network..." message to tell you that it has detected that the ".local" TLD is in use by DNS. In other words, your DNS nameserver(s) resolve names ending in ".local"; this interferes with Avahi, so Avahi disables itself.

To fix this, tell your network administrator to stop using the ".local" TLD. If that isn't possible then you can't use mDNS. Not the end of the world.