Ansible Role: Avahi Client

Avahi helps your system find local hostnames using the .local domain through MDNS (Multicast DNS). This Ansible role installs what you need and sets up the DNS resolver.

Important Options

• If you don’t want to install a new /etc/nsswitch.conf configuration, set avahi_client__configure_nsswitch to false.
• You can check for updates to avoid using an older version of this role by setting submodules_versioncheck to true.

Configuring nsswitch

If you only want to resolve IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, modify mdns to mdns4 for IPv4 or mdns6 for IPv6 in these variables:

avahi_client__mdns_name: 'mdns'
avahi_client__mdns_minimal_name: 'mdns_minimal'

According to the nss-mdns documentation:

• mdns resolves both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
• mdns4 resolves only IPv4 addresses.
• mdns6 resolves only IPv6 addresses.
• The minimal versions prevent resolving names that don’t end in .local or addresses outside the 169.254.x.x range.

Ansible Collection

This role is part of the l3d.avahi Ansible Collection.

For more details on downloading or using this collection in your Ansible playbook, check the README.md.

Example of Using the Role

# Install the role
ansible-galaxy install l3d.avahi_client

- name: "Let your System use MDNS to resolve .local addresses"
  hosts: localhost
  roles:
    - {role: l3d.avahi_client, tags: avahi}
  vars:
    # Enable optional version check
    submodules_versioncheck: true

Learn More

• DNS-SD
• mDNS
• Avahi
• Avahi on GitHub
• Avahi on Arch Wiki
• NSS mdns plugin
• nsswitch.conf Man Page