Troubleshooting Avahi

Resetting the cache

Avahi keeps a cache of old results. To reset the cache, kill the daemon. It will auto-restart.

sudo avahi-daemon --kill

Stopping the daemon

If you really want to stop the daemon, killing it is not sufficient because it will just restart. To stop it completely:

sudo systemctl mask avahi-daemon.socket
sudo systemctl disable avahi-daemon
sudo systemctl stop avahi-daemon

Problem: Failed to create avahi group: Not permitted

Avahi is not set up to publish records by default. This has to be explicitly allowed in the config file. In /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf, add the following lines:

[publish]
disable-user-service-publishing=no

Then restart the daemon

sudo systemctl restart avahi