mDNS

MicroShift includes an embedded mDNS server for deployment scenarios in which the authoritative DNS server cannot be reconfigured to point clients to services on MicroShift.

mDNS is a protocol used to allow name resolution and service discovery within a LAN using multicast exposed on the 5353/UDP port.

This allows .local domains exposed by MicroShift to be discovered by other elements on the Local Area Network.

Notes for Linux

mDNS resolution on Linux is provided by the avahi-daemon. For other Linux hosts to discover MicroShift services or for workers to locate the master node via mDNS, avahi should be enabled:

sudo dnf install -y nss-mdns avahi
hostnamectl set-hostname microshift-vm.local
systemctl enable --now avahi-daemon.service

By default only the minimal IPv4 mDNS resolver is implemented, that will only resolve TLD mDNS domains like hostname.local, if you want to use hostnames in the form of subdomain.domain.local you need to enable the full mDNS resolver on the host trying to resolve those dns entries:

echo .local > /etc/mdns.allow
echo .local. >> /etc/mdns.allow
sed -i 's/mdns4_minimal/mdns/g' /etc/nsswitch.conf