Re: Terrible mDNS responder

[Sergey Bugaev]

> Hmmm... How do you run the Hurd?  Do you run linux on bare metal and
> then Hurd on qemu?

Yes. I run Hurd on a qemu/libvirt VM that itself runs on GNU/Linux.

> When you are typing "herd.local" what does that
> mean?
>
> I suppose that means on your linux machine you are typing "ssh
> hurd.local"?

Yes, on any machine that's on the same network as your Hurd machine,
you should be able to use "its-hostname.local" to refer to it (if the
machine's OS supports mDNS lookup). That's just how mDNS works, it's
not specific to the Hurd, my configuration (briefly described below),
or the Terrible mDNS responder (which is just one among all the mDNS
responder implementations, and a terrible one at that :D).

You can use its-hostname.local with ssh, or anywhere else where you'd
use a host, such as with ping or curl or git, etc. Specifically, on
Unix this is anything that uses gethostbyname() or getaddrinfo(). You
can try asking glibc about it: `getent hosts its-hostname.local`. If
you're running sd-rd, try `resolvectl query its-hostname.local`, and
for Avahi try `avahi-resolve-host-name its-hostname.local`.

In my case the network is the virtual network that libvirt creates;
all the (suitably configured) libvirt VMs and the host are connected
to this network and can all see & talk to each other. If you're using
libvirt too, see the file /usr/share/libvirt/networks/default.xml and
the output of `virsh --connect qemu:///system net-info default`.

One thing where mDNS will *not* work is if you use qemu with "user
networking" and pass hostfwd=tcp::5555-:22 or somesuch to get SSH
access. In this case, there is no real network created, at least as
far as the host is concerned, so it won't be able to talk to your VM
over mDNS.

> May I help you create your email into some kind of manual page/wiki
> article/blog post?

Maybe?

But first, seeing that you're interested -- have you managed to build
/ install / use the Terrible mDNS responder? Does it work for you?

Sergey