Using Bonjour, mDNS, or ZeroConf with CeroWrt

CeroWrt ships with the Avahi daemon enabled to act as a mDNS reflector. mDNS is an extension to the DNS concept that allows resources such as printers, file servers, web servers, iTunes, etc. to advertise a name along with a description, and of course, the machine’s IP address. You can browse your local network to see what resources are available, then configure your computer to use that resource. For example, CeroWrt advertises its SSH and Web services using mDNS/Bonjour.

CeroWrt’s default configuration does not to reflect mDNS requests out the ge00 (WAN) port. This is the proper configuration when CeroWrt is the primary router in a household. However, if you’re using CeroWrt as a secondary router, it is convenient to enable the mDNS reflector so you can access resources on your “regular” network.

The configuration is saved in the /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf file. To allow the avahi-daemon to send queries into the ge00 network, ssh into the router, open /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf in an editor, then find the deny-interfaces=ge00 line and comment it out by placing a “#” at the front, like this:

#deny-interfaces=ge00

Then restart the avahi-daemon with this command:

/etc/init.d/avahi-daemon restart

mDNS resources on the ge00 port should now be visible and usable.

NB: These steps are included in the script at Automated Configuration of CeroWrt

Resources

• Avahi project website: http://avahi.org
• Avahi on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avahi_%28software%29
• Bonjour Browser: A Macintosh tool for browsing the Bonjour/mDNS services on the local network http://www.tildesoft.com/
• Bonjour Print Services for Windows: A Windows program that makes it easy to find printers on the local network. http://support.apple.com/kb/DL999