How does Ubuntu do local network name resolution?

[Rich Oliver]

I'm just starting to play around with Servers. I only did my first SSH remote login about a week ago. I like to distro hop. mostly between versions of Kubuntu and Suse, but also a little bit of Arch. I found didn't get along with Fedora. I'm thinking I might use Arch for my first server as I'll be remote logging in, so I don't need a desktop GUI. Its going to be very simple to start with just running on our local house network. Anyway one thing I've discovered is that if you add .local to a server name Ubuntu distros automatically resolve the host name for you. Arch and Suse don't. If I log into the Huwaei HG533 router I can see all the host names listed along with their IP addreses, MAC Address and Lease Duration (I presume that's how long they've been allocated the local dynamic IPv4 address.)

So is there anyway I can get this local name resolution service onto SUSE and Arch?

[oshunluvr]

I believe you're looking for libnss-mdns and/or avahi-daemon.

Question though: Why not use Ubuntu server if it does what you want? I'm just upgraded my server hardware and decided to move to Ubuntu server 14.04 at the same time. I've been using Ubuntu server since 10.04 (LTS only) and it does everything I need. Although honestly, I'm not making it do much right now...

[Rich Oliver]

Question though: Why not use Ubuntu server if it does what you want?

Well this is a little side project of mine mainly for fun and learning. I'm going to write a playing card dealer app. The algorithm is not a problem I can write that easily and quickly. I knocked together some (virtual) playing cards, shuffler and sorter functions in an hour, just because someone on a discussion board mentioned playing cards. It was only then that I had the idea for writing a dealing server, as I had just started to play around with HTTP and SSH. The back end App will be written in Scala. Any client side Java script will be written in Scala and compiled to Java script. And initially the HTTP server will be written in Scala. So I'm not initially going to be using the server functionality of Ubuntu or its RedHat etc competitors. I did start looking at Apache Tomcat which you need to run Java servlets some time back, but writing your own HTTP server from scratch in a high level language is way, way simpler than working out the proper installation and configuration of a Tomcat, and at the end of it your understanding is hugely improved, even if you throw the code into the re-cycling bin. Obviously writing a serious fast, secure production server is a completely different kettle of fish.

So I'd rather not be tied into Ubuntu derivatives for this one thing. !4.04 was working well for me (even played some Civ4 under Wine), but I've reinstalled 14.04 after flirting with 15.04 and 15.10 on desktop and laptop and since then, its not being playing nice.

By the way, if anyone feels interested by what I'm doing, for fun or for their own learning, they are very welcome to get involved. If they happened to live in the South West of Britain as well, that would be brilliant.