How are .local machine names published?

[jw2002]

I'm using a Time Capsule as a wireless router, and it provides addresses to my local machines via DHCP. On all my local machines, I provide a DHCP client ID, and this enables me to resolve my local machines via TCP/IP addressing. For instance, from any OS X machine in my subnet I can ping another, such as:

% ping -c 1 blort.local
PING blort.local (192.168.1.195): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.195: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.042 ms

However, this is not working from a Fedora Core host (actually running in Parallels). While I can ping the Fedora Core host via its DHCP client ID as a hostname from OS X, the Fedora host cannot resolve the other local machine names, even though it has identical DNS server and search path settings to the OS X boxes. Furthermore, when I use ``dig'' on OS X, it is not finding the local host names, as in:

% dig @192.168.1.1 blort.local +short
% dig @192.168.1.1 www.google.com +short
www.l.google.com.
64.233.161.147
64.233.161.99
64.233.161.104

So it appears that these local hosts are not resolved via DNS. How are they resolved? I'm guessing either I need to install a proper DNS on one of the machines, or get the Fedora box to employ the same resolution tactic that the OS X machines use for the .local subdomain.

To summarize, all my networking is running fine, and all machines can see each other and the outside world. The only issue is how to make hostnames in the .local subdomain visible to the Fedora box.

Thanks.

 

[jw2002]

Answering my own question: I found out that there is a plugin for Fedora Core 10 that takes care of this. Go to the System -> Add/Remove Software page and type mdns in the search box. One package called "glibc plugin for .local name resolution" will appear, and after an install and restart I can ping all my .local machines.