avahi-publish-address

avahi-publish-address [options] <hostname> <address>

-d, --domain=<DOMAIN>
    Domain to publish record on (default: .local)

-v, --verbose
    Increase verbosity of output

-q, --quiet
    Suppress non-essential output

--no-rlimit
    Disable Avahi daemon's resource limits

-h, --help
    Display help and exit

-V, --version
    Output version information and exit

avahi-publish-address is a command-line utility from the Avahi package, an open-source implementation of Zeroconf (mDNS/DNS-SD) for Linux and Unix-like systems. It announces a specific hostname-to-IP address mapping on the local network using multicast DNS, allowing devices to resolve the hostname without traditional DNS servers.

Primarily used for testing, debugging, or temporary setups, it enables quick advertisement of custom hostnames, such as mapping devserver.local to a private IP like 192.168.1.50. This is ideal for development environments, container networking, or ad-hoc service discovery where Bonjour-like functionality is needed.

The tool requires the avahi-daemon service to be running and configured to publish addresses (check /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf). It supports both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and defaults to the .local domain. Once invoked, it runs in the foreground indefinitely, periodically publishing the record until terminated (e.g., Ctrl+C). Output indicates successful publication, like "Found user-configured hostname".

Unlike avahi-publish-service, it only handles A/AAAA records, not full service (SRV/TXT) announcements.

Requires running avahi-daemon; runs foreground indefinitely (use & or nohup); limited to local multicast domain; hostname must not conflict with existing records.

avahi-publish-address myserver.local 192.168.1.100
Verify: avahi-resolve-host-name myserver.local
Output: myserver.local 192.168.1.100

avahi-publish-address myhost.local fe80::1%eth0

Introduced in early Avahi releases (~2004-2006) by Lennart Poettering as part of avahi-utils; stable since Avahi 0.6; focuses on simplicity for mDNS address publishing.

avahi-publish-service(1), avahi-browse(1), avahi-resolve-host-name(1), avahi-daemon(8)