[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2024 Free Software Foundation,
Inc."]]

[[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable
id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license
is included in the section entitled [[GNU Free Documentation
License|/fdl]]."]]"""]]

[[!tag open_issue_hurd]]

# What is the terrible mDNS responder?

Suppose you have the Hurd running on a another machine in your local
network.  `ssh <IP-ADDRESS>` is not guarenteed to work, because your
router will occassionally change the IP address of your Hurd machine.
That's kind of annoying!  Luckily, Sergey wrote the terrible-mDNS
responder, so that `ssh <hostname>.local` just works! How cool is
that!?

To be very clear, this does *not* teach the system to do mDNS queries
(.local hostname lookups). The terrible-mDNS-responder only responds
to other host's queries. (Those other hosts may be running Avahi or
sd-rd or Apple's mDNSResponder or LookupServer or ...)

The sources are over on
[[GitHub|https://github.com/bugaevc/terrible-mdns-responder]]. There
are no dependencies other than a libc. It's built with Meson and
licensed under AGPL v3+. It even comes with an awkward attempt at a
sysv init script! What's not to like?

# How to use it on Debian GNU/Hurd?

	$ git clone git@github.com:bugaevc/terrible-mdns-responder.git
	$ cd terrible-mdns-responder
	$ meson setup build # you may need to apt install meson
	$ ninja -C build
	$ sudo ninja install -C build
	$ sudo update-rc.d terrible-mdns-responder defaults
	$ sudo update-rc.d avahi-daemon disable
	$ sudo service terrible-mdns-responder start

# FAQ  Why not use avahi?

Debian GNU/Hurd comes with Avahi in the default install (I believe).
Avahi has never worked for me (on the Hurd), and I doubt it has ever
worked for anyone else either. I *have* looked into the why (as in
spent hours debugging and patching it); I don't remember the
specifics, but I do remember that I concluded it won't be easy to make
it work. So, a dead end.