Cannot connect to beaglebone.local

Question

I need to know how to connect to a beaglebone (or beagleboard) with SSH when I plug it into a new network with an ethernet cable like this:

    $ ssh [email protected] 

So far I've only been able to access it like this, if I know the IP address:

    $ ssh root@<ip_address> 

But I don't always know the IP address of the board on new networks so I'm hoping to access it with with a name like: beaglebone.local.

Right now when I try to do this I get this error:

    "ssh: Could not resolve hostname beaglebone.local: nodename nor servname provided, or not known" 

I checked the hostname and hosts files, and added "127.0.0.1 beaglebone" to the hosts on the beaglebone, but not sure what else I can do?

    # cat /etc/hostname 
    beaglebone 

    # cat /etc/hosts 
    127.0.0.1        localhost.localdomain                localhost 
    127.0.0.1        beaglebone 

Answer 1

I had a similar issue running my beaglebone on Angstrom-Cloud9-IDE-GNOME-eglibc-ipk-v2012.05-beaglebone-2012.04.22.img.xz. In this distribution, "beaglebone.local" should appear on the network after the system boots.

About 50% of the time after reboot, "beaglebone.local" would not appear on the network (although the bone would be available by IP address). When this happened, "systemctl status avahi-daemon.service" showed that the avahi-daemon failed with "exit code 255". Interestingly, a subsequent "systemctl start avaihi-daemon.service" would always be successful and "beaglebone.local" would appear on the network.

Also "journalctl | grep avahi" returned a single message stating something like "Daemon already runnin gon PID NNN".

So, I "fixed" the problem by adding the line "ExecStartPre=/bin/rm -f /var/run/avahi-daemon/pid" to the [Service] section of /lib/systemd/system/avahi-daemon.service. With this addition, "beaglebone.local" now appears on the network 100% of reboots.

I say "fixed" (i.e., in quotes) because I have not been able to track down the root cause that is leaving around the stray avahi pid file(s) and thus don't have a true fix.

-- Frank