Zeroconf in Fedora

How to get Zeroconf hostnames working in FC5

Fedora Core 5 includes some limited support for Zeroconf (AKA Multicast DNS, Apple Rendezvous, and Apple Bonjour).  Unforunately this doesn't stretch to integration with DNS lookups - so trying to access at a website on the local network with a name such as "thehub.local" won't work.

This problem particularly affects the sharing of printers from MacOS X.  A shared printer will be correctly found in Fedora's "Printing" administration tool under "Browsed queues", but if you try to print to this printer it won't work because the "hostname.local" address broadcast by MacOS X can't be found.

The solution is to install nss-mdns either from Lennart Poettering's site or from an RPM package of release 0.8 that I've put together.

Once installed edit the /etc/nsswitch.conf file to include mdns4 as a source of hosts lookups:
hosts:      files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns

Now you should be able to resolve hostnames on the local network using the name "hostname.local".