The Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD daemon implements Apple's Zeroconf
architecture (also known as "Rendezvous" or "Bonjour"). The daemon
registers local IP addresses and static services using
mDNS/DNS-SD and provides two IPC APIs for local programs to make
use of the mDNS record cache the avahi-daemon maintains. First
there is the so called "simple protocol" which is used
exclusively by avahi-dnsconfd (a daemon which configures unicast
DNS servers using server info published via mDNS) and nss-mdns
(a libc NSS plugin, providing name resolution via mDNS). Finally
there is the D-Bus interface which provides a rich object
oriented interface to D-Bus enabled applications.
Upon startup avahi-daemon interprets its configuration file
@pkgsysconfdir@/avahi-daemon.conf and reads XML
fragments from @servicedir@/*.service which may
define static DNS-SD services. If you enable
publish-resolv-conf-dns-servers in
avahi-daemon.conf the file
/etc/resolv.conf will be read, too.
@pkgsysconfdir@/avahi-daemon.conf: the default configuration file for avahi-daemon, for more information.
@pkgsysconfdir@/hosts: additional static hostname mappings to publish in mDNS, see for more information.
@servicedir@/*.service: static service definitions, see for more information.
SIGINT, SIGTERM: avahi-daemon will shutdown. (Same as --kill).
SIGHUP: avahi-daemon will reload unicast DNS
server data from /etc/resolv.conf and static
service definitions from @servicedir@/. (Same as --reload)
SIGUSR1: avahi-daemon will dump local and remote cached resource record data to syslog.
The Avahi Developers <@PACKAGE_BUGREPORT@>; Avahi is
available from
, , , ,
http://avahi.org/wiki/AvahiAndUnicastDotLocal documents the problems when using Avahi in a unicast DNS zone .local.