Ubuntu Avahi Troubleshooting Help
Avahi Init Script Failing
If avahi doesn't start automatically out of the box, then its having a conflict with a local. domain being served by your isp (this is your isp's fault - *spank*). Subsequently, the ros zeroconf_avahi module will simply fail to make the client:
[ERROR] [1368605791.476471861]: Zeroconf: failed to create an avahi client.
You can confirm this on the command line directly by trying to start the avahi daemon:
> sudo /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon start * Starting Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Daemon avahi-daemon * avahi-daemon disabled because there is a unicast .local domain
This is avahi meekly backing down, but you can tell it to be bold and bypass the check by editing /etc/default/avahi-daemon:
AVAHI_DAEMON_DETECT_LOCAL=0
Alternatively you can put all your robots on another domain (e.g. .alocal).
Note: you can discover who is serving your local domain by running the host command. In the example below, we are having trouble with an ISP here in korea incorrectly serving the local domain.
$ host -t SOA local local has SOA record kns.kornet.net. domain.ns.kornet.net. 2007102500 43200 3600 604800 43200