MDNS

Multicast DNS is a protocol that is normally used for the discovery of printers. It is implemented by Avahi, but more setup is needed for the regular name resolution to see the results.

Setup avahi

Install, enable and start avahi with:

sudo apk add avahi
sudo rc-update add avahi-daemon
sudo rc-service avahi-daemon start

It should now be possible to browse results. To look for a printer, use:

sudo apk add avahi-tools
avahi-browse --resolve --terminate  _ipp._tcp

Make note of the hostname, as we will use it afterwards.

Setup avahi2dns

Name resolution is implemented by musl, and it only supports dns, so we have to map the avahi results to a regular dns server. This is done by avahi2dns.

 git clone https://github.com/LouisBrunner/avahi2dns
 cd avahi2dns
 go build
 sudo cp avahi2dns /usr/bin
 sudo cp openrc/avahi2dns /etc/init.d

since we will want a full dns server running at port 53, we need to configure avahi2dns to use another port. Do that by creating /etc/conf.d/avahi2dns containing

 command_args="-p 5354"

Enable and start avahi2dns with

sudo rc-update add avahi-daemon
sudo rc-service avahi-daemon start

It should now be possible to use dns to query the address of the printer.

 drill -p 5354 @127.0.0.1 <printer_name>.local

Where printer_name is the hostname given by avahi-browse.

We now need to setup a dns resolver that will forward request of .local domain to avahi2dns and handle other requests normally. There is more than one way to do it, but we document an option that is probably most convenient for a laptop: using the dhcp provided server for the regular dns requests. We will use unbound as the server and resolvconf and iwd to inform unbound about the dhcp results.

Install the programs:

 apk add openresolv unbound iwd

Create /etc/resolvconf.conf:

 name_servers=127.0.0.1
 unbound_conf=/etc/unbound-resolvconf.conf

This tells resolveconf to use a local nameserver and pass the dhcp provided dns server to unbound

Create /etc/unbound/unbound.conf:

 forward-zone:
       name: "local"
       forward-addr: 127.0.0.1@5354
 include: "/etc/unbound-resolvconf.conf"
 server:
       do-not-query-localhost: no
       domain-insecure: "local"

This reads the information provided by resolvconf, but forwards .local requests to avahi2dns. We also need to disable dnssec for .local and tell unbound that it is OK to query localhost.

And the last config charge is to have iwd forward dns server info to resolveconf. To do that create /etc/iwd/main.conf:

 [Network]
 NameResolvingService=resolvconf

Enable and start unbound

 sudo rc-update add unbound
 sudo rc-service unbound

Reconnect to your wifi. You should now be able to query for both the printer address and regular addresses with

 drill @127.0.0.1 <printer_name>.local
 drill @127.0.0.1 alpinelinux.org

Your /etc/resolv.conf should also contain

 nameserver 127.0.0.1

So printer discovery should now be working.