Problems of the .local zone in modern Linux distributions

Many Internet providers provide such services as torrent-retreker for their subscribers. Some torrent trackers (including rutracker.org) add information about such a universal retrecker as retracker.local to their torrent files. But in modern distributions (such as Ubuntu, openSUSE, etc.) this address is not resolved correctly.



The problem is in using the avahi service to announce computer resources on the local network, since the .local zone is used for these purposes. To solve this problem it is not necessary to get rid of avahi. It is enough to point out that if you cannot find a subdomain, ask dns about it.



To do this, open the /etc/nsswitch.conf file under the root and look for a line in it that is responsible for the hosts.

In openSUSE 11.3, it looks like this:

hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns



In Ubuntu 10.04, it looks like this:

hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4



All we need to do is get rid of the option [NOTFOUND = return], putting the line in the form:

openSUSE 11.3

hosts: files mdns4_minimal dns



Ubuntu 10.04

hosts: files mdns4_minimal dns mdns4



Restart avahi-daemon and enjoy the collaboration of avahi and retreker (or other services in the .local zone) of your provider.

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Published on request and on behalf of the user vovochka404