On Thu, Dec 29, 2016 at 04:46:22PM +0000, Brian wrote: > On Wed 28 Dec 2016 at 19:54:34 +0900, Mark Fletcher wrote: > > > However, I now discover that Avahi is not doing its thing properly any > > more, and other machines on my network cannot see this machine by name. > > Its IP address right now is 192.168.11.13 and its name is affinity. I > > have another machine on my network, a jessie box, which is called kazuki > > and happens to be at IP 192.168.11.4 right now. From kazuki I can ping > > affinity by IP address, and likewise from affinity I can ping kazuki by > > IP address, but ping kazuki.local from affinity and ping affinity.local > > from kazuki both fail with "ping: unknown host X" where X is the machine > > I am trying to ping, after a pause that suggests some sort of attempt to > > find the other machine is being made. > > You do have libnss-mdns installed and the line > > hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns > > in /etc/nsswitch? >
Thanks Brian. I have got to think the answer is YES since it *was* previously working, and even now works (I discovered after my original post) immediately after booting or after restarting NetworkManager, but then stops working after that. I will check facts later when the machine is up and verify. Some developments on this. I am noticing that, even when using the WiFi extension, the WiFi interface on this box seems to "go to sleep" if left idle for a few minutes. So when the machine first comes up, all is working as it should, but if left idle for a while, suddenly I can't ping the machine any more. If I ping it from another machine on my network and leave ping running, after about 30 seconds or so the pings start being answered. But from that time I can no longer find the machine by name (ping affinity.local will fail to resolve affinity.local, ping <ip address> will work). So Avahi not working could be a symptom rather than a cause, if you see what I mean. Or rather, be a secondary issue caused by the real issue, which is what I should be solving. The WiFi interface is a Realtek RTL8723BE device, and the firmware is being successfully found and loaded on boot (Checked in journalctl -b). Googling around I have found some modprobe options that are suggested for this card, so I am going to try those and see if that makes any difference. But I'm startuing to think it is a stability-of-the-network-interface issue rather than an Avahi or an out-on-the-edge-of-WiFi-range issue as I thought it was originally. Mark
