Network service discovery disabled: What does this mean for me?

Question

Every time at boot I get a message “Network service discovery disabled. Your current network has a .local domain, which is not recommended and incompatible with the Avahi network service discovery. The service has been disabled.”

What does this mean for me?

Wi-Fi is disabled.

Solution 1

It looks like avahi-daemon is started when the network connection is established (/etc/network/if-up.d/avahi-daemon). This notification is informing you that mDNS (Avahi) has been disabled. It's only used for a small number of applications that only work on the local network, it won't adversely affect your internet connection or DNS.

The most well known use for mDNS is sharing music with Rhythmbox (or iTunes) over your LAN. It's an Apple technology, but it's largely been ignored in favour of uPNP or DLNA.

To disable it, you must edit the file /etc/default/avahi-daemon as root:

sudo -i
gedit /etc/default/avahi-daemon

and add this line (or change it if already exists to):

AVAHI_DAEMON_DETECT_LOCAL=0

Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1632952

Solution 2

According to the Avahi wiki there are two workarounds:

Better one:

In /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf uncomment and change the line with domain name to

domain-name=.alocal

Second one:

In /etc/nsswitch.conf delete a [NOTFOUND=return] text.

Solution 3

It probably says that Avahi is disabled because you have a .local domain and Avahi doesn't work very well with this.

Avahi is a zero conf protocol like Apples Bonjour commonly used if you have Macs on your network or if you want to chat with others on your local network without logging in to a server like Google Talk or MSN Messenger.

You can read about the problem here.

You could probably just ignore it or configure your network to use another domain name then the default .local.

Solution 4

While there may be multiple causes, I began getting the exact same error on ubuntu 14.04 after a change of ISP. Some naughty ISP's use local domain addresses for their DNS servers as explained here. My ubuntu box's network uses a manual configuration so setting the DNS to my router's IP instead of the ISP's DNS server address fixed the problem. Internally, the router is using the ISP's locally domained DNS server but ubuntu is unaware and happy. More evidence here that this is the ISP's fault

In short, check if your ISP is using local domain non-routable DNS IP addresses. If so, switch DNS provider on ubuntu.

View more solutions

Comments

[tripleee]

This is a known issue: bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/avahi/+bug/327362

[rdtsc]

Sometime in the past week, my Lubuntu 18.04 laptop started displaying this, simultaneously at work and home. Work uses a .local AD server (which isn't smart but eh, no messages before.) Could have been some update or software install which "triggered" it. host -t SOA local. does give a response from home, unsure what this would have been before. @int_ua "solution" worked for me.

[Nickolai Leschov]

And where exactly has been mDNS (Avahi) disabled? On my local network router? I think I don't use it, but I might have used to: I used to run an iTunes service on my FreeNAS server.

[Radu Rădeanu]

@NickolaiLeschov What to do with your network router? It was disabled probably because does nothing to do. When you will run an app that will need it, that app should know how to enable it.

[Vitaly Zdanevich]

Not working for me.

[int_ua]

Both of them? Are there any changes in the wiki?

[int_ua]

Looks good, please add it as another answer :)

[Mikko Rantalainen]

At least here in Finland, the DNS of a major ISP (Sonera) has been configured to claim authority for .local domain. Check host -t soa local. - you should get not found: 3(NXDOMAIN). For example: host -t soa local. 8.8.8.8 will test Google DNS. A broken DNS server will return something like local has SOA record localhost. hostmaster.sonera.fi. 20130911 14400 7200 604800 900.

[Decebal]

have not worked for me on ubuntu 14.04

[rubo77]

It seems, like here are several good reasons, Why you shouldn't use .local in your Active Directory domain name., so just disabling the warnint is not a good solution.

[rubo77]

So please add how to "configure your network to use another domain name"

[djb]

I did this but I still get the error on login

[silpol]

@rubo77 well, if your ISP tosses upon you wrong dot local domain, there is no howto except making ticket with them and requesting to remove that from their configuration for you.

[Nonny Moose]

Link rot alert! EDIT: Seems to be temporary...

[RoyS]

This solution worked for me running 16.04, very simple and effective. I've rebooted the laptop several times and all seems well. Thanks

[wisbucky]

Nice, worked for me! Note that logout/login was not sufficient. I had to reboot for the message to go away.