Configure resolv.conf nsswitch.conf etc to search .local

Question

After installing a new router I find I cannot ping hosts on my local network using just the simple hostname.
I used to be able to ping myhost, but now I find I need to ping myhost.local.
My nsswitch.conf hosts line looks like
hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns myhostname wins
I tried adding various search values to  /etc/resolv.conf, but couldn't find one that worked.
Is there a way to get the .local domain searched, my router (although expensive) doesn't seem to facilitate this?

Answer 1

After some digging in the nss-mdns package source I find that the option to respect resolv.conf search domains is turned off in the Arch build. However, a simple patch to nss.c seems to fix things up fairly easily. A more complex one would be required to respect the /etc/mdns.allowed file domains. It seems like such an obvious thing to do for domainless searches that I wonder why this wasn't done by the original author.
$ diff nss.c.orig nss.c
380a381,407
> if (u.count == 0 && avahi_works && !strstr(name, ".")) {
> const char *p="local";
> int fullnamesize;
> char *fullname;
> fullnamesize = strlen(name) + strlen(p) + 2;
> if ((fullname = malloc(fullnamesize))){
> snprintf(fullname, fullnamesize, "%s.%s", name, p);
> if (verify_name_allowed(fullname)) {
> int r;
> if ((r = avahi_resolve_name(af, fullname, data)) < 0) {
> /* Lookup failed */
> avahi_works = 0;
> }
> else if (r == 0) {
> /* Lookup succeeded */
> if (af == AF_INET && ipv4_func)
> ipv4_func((ipv4_address_t*) data, &u);
> if (af == AF_INET6 && ipv6_func)
> ipv6_func((ipv6_address_t*)data, &u);
> }
> else
> /* Lookup suceeded, but nothing found */
> status = NSS_STATUS_NOTFOUND;
> }
> free(fullname);
> }
> }