how do I make the zeroconf go away

[fivemack]

I have a couple of computers running ubuntu 9.04, and two others running 8.04, all attached to a gigabit switch attached to an ethernet-to-wifi bridge bridged to a little Buffalo ADSL-router-box connected to the internet.

The little Buffalo ADSL-router-box has a DHCP server, which is set to hand out particular fixed IP addresses to the MAC addresses of my computers; I have /etc/hosts files on all the machines saying things like '172.26.200.43 cow'. For the 8.04 machines, this works fine.

For the 9.04 machines, the address assignment is ignored entirely. However, something (which I think is zeroconf) talks to the ADSL-router-box and causes it to set things up in its DNS, meaning that I can say 'ssh node2@cow.local' and get to the machine called cow, whose IP address is however not 172.26.200.43 (and indeed changes every 24 hours).

How do I go about turning this off, so that the computers keep the addresses that I have assigned for them in the DHCP server on the router-box rather than daily going through some complicated protocol to negotiate a wrong address that keeps changing ?

Extracts from /var/log/syslog that might be relevant are at http://pastebin.com/T0rLdrc1

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Set up /etc/resolve.conf as you want it, then 'chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf' to stop the damn thing mucking it around

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Well, the AVAHI daemon is the zeroconf thing. It's not on the CENTOS system I have to hand; is there an AVAHI service running on your boxes (it's certainly appearing in your logs)? Does shutting it off help? ( service avahi stop ). (If so, you'll need to use chkconfig or something to set it to not auto-start when you reboot.) I've never tried doing this, so it's a shot in the dark, no guaranty.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Yeah, zap avahi and mdns ("multicast dns").

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

OK, I've done 'sudo /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon stop' on the two machines, and poked about so that they shouldn't restart on boot. Now when I sit and do 'ssh nfsslave2@cow.local' from a third machine it says 'ssh: Could not resolve hostname carthorse.local: No address associated with nodename'.

cow is still on 172.26.200.117 rather than 172.26.200.43 which the DHCP configuration would suggest, but I suppose IP addresses don't change instantly, so I'll see how much it has exploded and in what directions the shrapnel has gone tomorrow morning.