In preparation for some robotics I've dug out my Raspberry Pi 2 B and I'm reacquainting myself with it. Tonight's goal: Boot up an old Raspbian Squeeze SD card and get the Pi to identify on the LAN with a domain-name -- rather than having to learn it's IP address -- using avahi (AKA Bonjour or zero-conf mDNS networking).

I went with the Squeeze image I have from 2015 because it was already installed -- to install Jesse past first-boot I'd have to hook up a TV/keyboard/mouse and my home lab is drk and cold tonight.

I had to do just a couple of things

Install Avahi-Daemon and enable it on boot
Tell it to ignore the Apple gear in my house
Reset the hostname on my image to something less generic than raspberrypi since there could be more than one at the Huon Robotics Lab.

Intall Avahi-Daemon

$ sudo apt-get update #it's been two years, so the repo DB is out of date
$ sudo apt-get install avahi-daemon

Tell Avahi to ignore the Apples

Edit /etc/default/avahi-daemon and set AVAHI_DAEMON_DETECT_LOCAL=0

Enable avahi-daemon on boot

I'm unsure if this is enabled after you install it. In Raspbian/Debian the daemons are enabled Unix System V "runlevels" style, using links to rc-files. These can be managed in a friendly way with a tool called sysv-rc-conf. This gives you a text-mode screen with a list of daemons and the runlevels they are enabled for.

$ sudo apt-get install sysv-conf-tool
$ sudo sysv-conf-tool

Make sure avahi-daemon is enabled (has X's) for run-levels 3, 4 and 5 (the multi-user/network run-levels).

Set hostname

I went with "squeeze-pi" because I have no imagination.

Edit /etc/hostname and change raspberrypi to squeeze-pi

Edit /etc/hosts and add squeeze-pi to the list of names for 127.0.0.1 -- I still want the old name to resolve.

reboot

I am now able to SSH to pi@squeeze-pi.local on the LAN, no need to figure out the IP address of the Pi.