{"slug": "avahi", "name": "Avahi", "category": "networking", "category_name": "Networking and VPN", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 5, "warners": 0, "score": 3.931, "rising": 0.02, "first": "2025-12-27", "latest": "2026-09-19", "why": "mDNS works out of the box on any glibc system with libnss-mdns and a running avahi-daemon", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 1, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "mDNS works out of the box on any glibc system with libnss-mdns and a running avahi-daemon", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://avahi.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Avahi"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 796274353, "item_id": 49767147, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49767147", "by": "dTal", "date": "2026-09-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "mDNS works out of the box on any glibc system with libnss-mdns and a running avahi-daemon", "excerpt": "> I personally can go on and on and on about how awesome it is that systemd offers workload isolation, least privileges, cgroups for juggling priorities. I love that mdns kind of just works for me, and integrates well with my resolver. So.... mDNS works out of the box on any glibc system with libnss-mdns and a running avahi-daemon - not \"kind of\" works, just Works. cgroups are a kernel feature that is quite straightf", "context": "", "use_case": "mDNS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Systemd is a suite of basic building blocks"}, {"id": 781279296, "item_id": 48829956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48829956", "by": "MrDOS", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Install avahi-daemon.", "excerpt": "Some other things I find useful on NASes: Install avahi-daemon. Samba will automatically register with it to advertise SMB/CIFS to macOS and Linux clients over DNS-SD. Install wsdd2 so that your server will be auto-discovered by Explorer on Windows 10+ clients with SMB 1.0 disabled, too. Your Linux hostname is probably lower-case, but by default, Samba publishes a capitalized rendering of the hostname to NetBIOS and ", "context": "", "use_case": "Service discovery for Samba", "switched_from": "", "story": "How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS"}, {"id": 781175792, "item_id": 48823487, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48823487", "by": "dofm", "date": "2026-07-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Works like a charm", "excerpt": "Can you not use Avahi in the guest and get zeroconf? Oh! Do you mean the issue is adding extra name resolution to a VM? Have you tried this avahi alias trick? https://gist.github.com/tomslominski/9d507acd4036952d65b2364d3750fb36 Works like a charm, bit odd that you have a persistent avahi client process broadcasting per alias, but it's lightweight.", "context": "", "use_case": "Zeroconf name resolution in VM", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Davit, a Apple Containers UI"}, {"id": 742459360, "item_id": 46403710, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46403710", "by": "igneo676", "date": "2025-12-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'd encourage you to give it a shot now with Avahi", "excerpt": "Yeah, most of those real gaps have been solved at this point. I'd encourage you to give it a shot now with Avahi", "context": "", "use_case": "network service discovery", "switched_from": "", "story": "Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["mdns", "service discovery for samba", "zeroconf name resolution in vm", "mdns service discovery", "network service discovery"], "compared": [], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49756762", "title": "Systemd is a suite of basic building blocks", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48827325", "title": "How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48821848", "title": "Show HN: Davit, a Apple Containers UI", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48543392", "title": "Memory safety CVEs differ between Rust and C/C++", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46380075", "title": "Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 796274353, "item_id": 49767147, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49767147", "by": "dTal", "date": "2026-09-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "mDNS works out of the box on any glibc system with libnss-mdns and a running avahi-daemon", "excerpt": "> I personally can go on and on and on about how awesome it is that systemd offers workload isolation, least privileges, cgroups for juggling priorities. I love that mdns kind of just works for me, and integrates well with my resolver. So.... mDNS works out of the box on any glibc system with libnss-mdns and a running avahi-daemon - not \"kind of\" works, just Works. cgroups are a kernel feature that is quite straightf", "context": "", "use_case": "mDNS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Systemd is a suite of basic building blocks"}, {"id": 781279296, "item_id": 48829956, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48829956", "by": "MrDOS", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Install avahi-daemon.", "excerpt": "Some other things I find useful on NASes: Install avahi-daemon. Samba will automatically register with it to advertise SMB/CIFS to macOS and Linux clients over DNS-SD. Install wsdd2 so that your server will be auto-discovered by Explorer on Windows 10+ clients with SMB 1.0 disabled, too. Your Linux hostname is probably lower-case, but by default, Samba publishes a capitalized rendering of the hostname to NetBIOS and ", "context": "", "use_case": "Service discovery for Samba", "switched_from": "", "story": "How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS"}, {"id": 781175792, "item_id": 48823487, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48823487", "by": "dofm", "date": "2026-07-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Works like a charm", "excerpt": "Can you not use Avahi in the guest and get zeroconf? Oh! Do you mean the issue is adding extra name resolution to a VM? Have you tried this avahi alias trick? https://gist.github.com/tomslominski/9d507acd4036952d65b2364d3750fb36 Works like a charm, bit odd that you have a persistent avahi client process broadcasting per alias, but it's lightweight.", "context": "", "use_case": "Zeroconf name resolution in VM", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Davit, a Apple Containers UI"}, {"id": 776790736, "item_id": 48549421, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48549421", "by": "lathiat", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We generally did this in the avahi libraries", "excerpt": "The problem with asserts is that they are pretty dramatic and you crash the entire program. We generally did this in the avahi libraries, be fairly liberal with asserts that \"shouldn't happen\", it is a source of complaints though because basically you can be using a third party library that uses avahi and have your program crash due to a bug in that library, or in avahi. It's extra fun when using some historical libc", "context": "", "use_case": "mDNS service discovery", "switched_from": "", "story": "Memory safety CVEs differ between Rust and C/C++"}, {"id": 742459360, "item_id": 46403710, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46403710", "by": "igneo676", "date": "2025-12-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'd encourage you to give it a shot now with Avahi", "excerpt": "Yeah, most of those real gaps have been solved at this point. I'd encourage you to give it a shot now with Avahi", "context": "", "use_case": "network service discovery", "switched_from": "", "story": "Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig"}]}