Multiple mt-daapd / avahi daemons running in virtual servers

[eschoeller]

I am attempting to fire up mt-daapd / avahi within multiple virtual servers on the same physical machine. Should work right? Well, not quite, despite my best wishes.

I honestly figured that I would have no problem with this whatsoever, but that never seems to be the case.

Scenario:
debian etch
mt-daapd 0.2.4+r1376-1
avahi-daemon 0.6.16-3etch1
linux-vserver
no firewall (all policies set to ACCEPT)

Each mt-daapd instance works just fine on it’s own. However, when the second one fires up, it knocks the first one off itunes. Both virtual servers have different IP addresses but are on the same subnet. In netstat, it is clear that each mt-daapd/avahi daemon on the virtual servers are binding to their own 192.168.0.x address, and on the host O/S nothing is bound to either of these ports. In my mind, this should be no different than firing up two mt-daapd/avahi’s on two physically different machines on the same network … but obviously something else is at work here.

This seems to come down to an mDNS problem … which I absolutely loathe – mainly because I have such a limited understanding of it.

This may be the wrong place to ask for help, as it may be the fault of my virutalized enviornment, but I needed a place to start.

Thanks!

[rpedde]

@eschoeller wrote:

I am attempting to fire up mt-daapd / avahi within multiple virtual servers on the same physical machine. Should work right? Well, not quite, despite my best wishes.

I honestly figured that I would have no problem with this whatsoever, but that never seems to be the case.

Scenario:
debian etch
mt-daapd 0.2.4+r1376-1
avahi-daemon 0.6.16-3etch1
linux-vserver
no firewall (all policies set to ACCEPT)

Each mt-daapd instance works just fine on it’s own. However, when the second one fires up, it knocks the first one off itunes. Both virtual servers have different IP addresses but are on the same subnet. In netstat, it is clear that each mt-daapd/avahi daemon on the virtual servers are binding to their own 192.168.0.x address, and on the host O/S nothing is bound to either of these ports. In my mind, this should be no different than firing up two mt-daapd/avahi’s on two physically different machines on the same network … but obviously something else is at work here.

This seems to come down to an mDNS problem … which I absolutely loathe – mainly because I have such a limited understanding of it.

This may be the wrong place to ask for help, as it may be the fault of my virutalized enviornment, but I needed a place to start.

Thanks!

Easiest thing to do is to not rely on auto-registration with avahi. Just manually configure avahi with the ip and ports and whatnot, and run mt-daapd with the “-m” config option. Then avahi will be in charge of advertising, and then they won’t be stepping on each other.

— Ron

[eschoeller]

I ended up just running mDNSResponder on one of the virtual servers and avahi on the other. I can see both of them now so that seems to have worked just fine.

At some point when i have time i’ll try to further diagnose this issue and come up with a better resolution – but i doubt many others run into this sort of problem.

Thanks again Ron for your continued support!

[rpedde]

@eschoeller wrote:

I ended up just running mDNSResponder on one of the virtual servers and avahi on the other. I can see both of them now so that seems to have worked just fine.

At some point when i have time i’ll try to further diagnose this issue and come up with a better resolution – but i doubt many others run into this sort of problem.

Thanks again Ron for your continued support!

You might try a nightly, as that’s compiled for native avahi rather than the howl compatibility mode — it *might* work better/differently when using the native interface.

Not sure.

— Ron

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