.Local zone issues in modern Linux distributions

Many Internet providers provide a service such as a torrent retracker for their subscribers. Some torrent trackers (including rutracker.org) add information about such a universal retracker as retracker.local to their torrent files. But in modern distributions (such as Ubuntu, openSUSE, etc.) this address does not resolve correctly.

The problem is to use the avahi service to announce computer resources on the local network, as the .local zone is used for these purposes. To solve this problem it is not necessary to get rid of avahi. It is enough to indicate that if you cannot find the subdomain, ask dns about it.

To do this, open the /etc/nsswitch.conf file under the root and look in it for the line responsible for the hosts.
In openSUSE 11.3, it looks like this:
hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns

In Ubuntu 10.04, it looks like this:
hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4

All we need to do is get rid of the [NOTFOUND = return] option, bringing the line to the view:
openSUSE 11.3
hosts: files mdns4_minimal dns

Ubuntu 10.04
hosts: files mdns4_minimal dns mdns4

Restart avahi-daemon and enjoy the joint work of avahi and retracker (or other services in the zone. local) of your provider.

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Published at the request and on behalf of the user vovochka404