Finished my investigation. Guess it is not a bug after all, rather — I would say — a matter of extremely dispersed documentation plus very unfriendly behavior from the ISP.
The situation is that even if you put mdns_minimal in front of other entries in hosts in nsswitch, mdns /is not queried/ if the DNS declares SOA for the "local" domain. Mine does. This is the reason why I was getting the impression of systemd-resolved passing queries to DNS even when it should not have. It was actually nss_mdns to let it do so. The fact that for some time my isp has directed all dns queries to its own nameserver even when another one was selected did not help in verifying the behavior with a dns not declaring SOA for local. Yet, this aspect of the linux mdns implementation should be documented with much better emphasis, or even better, there should be a way to make mdns_minimal report/log what it is doing. Currently, you find mention of the mdns "handover" to dns for local only looking at the very end of /usr/share/doc/libnss-mdns/README.md.gz where the heuristics is explained. Because heuristics /can go wrong/, the item should IMHO be given much better emphasis. For instance, I suggest that ubuntu ships with a man page for nss_mdns and nss_mdns_minimal. ** Changed in: systemd (Ubuntu) Status: New => Invalid ** Package changed: systemd (Ubuntu) => nss-mdns (Ubuntu) -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to systemd in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1883793 Title: systemd-resolved leaks mDNS queries to DNS Status in nss-mdns package in Ubuntu: Invalid Bug description: On a freshly installed ubuntu focal machine, access to local machines advertised via mDNS is now broken. This is a regression wrt eoan where it used to work. Trying to ping something like <host>.local invariably results in pinging 40.68.249.35 because systemd-resolved passes the query to the DNS even if .local is reserved for multicast DNS and for some reasons <anything>.local seems to resolve to 40.68.249.35. This happens even if the avahi daemon is up and running. Stopping systemd-resolved makes the mDNS resolution work as expected. Not only this breaks standard workflows, but it also means that anyone pretending to be 40.68.249.35 on the network could probably impersonate any local host. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04 Package: systemd 245.4-4ubuntu3.1 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-37.41-generic 5.4.41 Uname: Linux 5.4.0-37-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.2 Architecture: amd64 CasperMD5CheckResult: skip CurrentDesktop: KDE Date: Tue Jun 16 23:43:22 2020 EcryptfsInUse: Yes InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-02-16 (121 days ago) InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" - Release amd64 (20191017) MachineType: SCHENKER SCHENKER_SLIM14_SSL14L19 ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-37-generic root=/dev/mapper/VG_NVMe-root ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7 SourcePackage: systemd SystemdDelta: [EXTENDED] /usr/lib/systemd/system/rc-local.service → /usr/lib/systemd/system/rc-local.service.d/debian.conf [EXTENDED] /usr/lib/systemd/system/user@.service → /usr/lib/systemd/system/user@.service.d/timeout.conf 2 overridden configuration files found. UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-05-23 (24 days ago) dmi.bios.date: 10/02/2019 dmi.bios.vendor: INSYDE Corp. dmi.bios.version: 1.07.04RTR1 dmi.board.asset.tag: Tag 12345 dmi.board.name: N141CU dmi.board.vendor: SCHENKER dmi.board.version: Not Applicable dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Tag dmi.chassis.type: 10 dmi.chassis.vendor: Notebook dmi.chassis.version: N/A dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnINSYDECorp.:bvr1.07.04RTR1:bd10/02/2019:svnSCHENKER:pnSCHENKER_SLIM14_SSL14L19:pvrNotApplicable:rvnSCHENKER:rnN141CU:rvrNotApplicable:cvnNotebook:ct10:cvrN/A: dmi.product.family: Not Applicable dmi.product.name: SCHENKER_SLIM14_SSL14L19 dmi.product.sku: Not Applicable dmi.product.version: Not Applicable dmi.sys.vendor: SCHENKER To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nss-mdns/+bug/1883793/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp