<name>.local resulting in unknown host

[Colin Law]

On an up to date install of Ubuntu Mate (updated from Beta 2) the command
ping name.local (where name is a machine on the local network) results in
ping: unknown host name.local

I can ping the machine running Mate from other machines running Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04 and they can ping each other using name.local, but the Mate machine does not recognise any of the others.

On the Mate machine avahi-browse shows all the machines on the network, so I see information such as
+ eth0 IPv4 name [f0:ad:4e:00:41:33] Workstation local

I don't know whether this is a Mate specific issue.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.10
Package: avahi-daemon 0.6.31-4ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.16.0-22.29-generic 3.16.4
Uname: Linux 3.16.0-22-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.14.7-0ubuntu6
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Oct 14 09:34:20 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-10-12 (1 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu MATE 14.10 "Utopic Unicorn" - beta2 i386 (20140925)
SourcePackage: avahi
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

With the help of Marius Gedminas I have determined that the problem is caused by the fact that libnss-mdns is not installed by default. Installing it fixes the issue. I don't know whether it should be installed in Ubuntu Mate by default or not. I also don't know whether it is installed by default in Ubuntu 14.10. I believe it was included in previous versions of Ubuntu.

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

I understand that libnss-mdns is pulled in by ubuntu-desktop on 14.04 (via Recommends). So the remaining question is whether it is a bug that it is not pulled in on Ubuntu Mate.

[Martin Wimpress  (flexiondotorg)]

I confirm that libnss-mdns is not installed by default and I will fix this in time for the final release.

[Martin Wimpress  (flexiondotorg)]

Installing Recommended packages has been disabled in the seeds that create the Ubuntu MATE meta-packages. This is required to prevent many unnecessary packages, such as a Unity, Qt5 and some of GNOME3, being installed alongside Ubuntu MATE.

libnss-mdns is detected as a Recommended package by germinate, the utility and turns seeds into meta-packages. I have tried expressly listing libnss-mdns as a hard dependency but this doesn't override its Recommended status and therefore libnss-mdns is not installed :-(

During the 15.04 cycle we will aim for Ubuntu MATE to be fully recognised as an official Ubuntu flavour and I will see if we can address this issue at that time.

[Martin Wimpress  (flexiondotorg)]

Fixed for Trusty and Utopic.

You'll need to:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-mate-core ubuntu-mate-desktop