I was pleasantly surprised to find avahi installed as part of os2008. It's running in order to find zeroconf/bonjour services, but it's not advertising any services by default. The first thing that I did as a mac user is to name the device.

As root, edit /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf

uncomment host-name and give your device a more friendly name like

host-name=hodge-podge

restart avahi by...

/etc/init.d/avahi-daemon restart

and now you can, from your mac.

ssh root@hodge-podge.local

This will work anywhere you are on the same broadcast segment as your NIT. No need to ifconfig to find the local address of your device!

Thanks for the tip. I'm using 2008HE and had to download Bonjour Support but it was installed without a problem. Btw I've never heard about avahi before, pretty cool project...

Is avahi still included with all the latest diablo updates and are the paths still the same? I'm having problems following these instructions since the paths are invalid.

I don't think it is. IIRC, you'd need to install the rtcom beta stuff to get it.

Anyway, naming the device should be done once in the settings; they should then use this one name for bluetooth, avahi, as the resource name for XMPP etc.

Last I checked the Bonjour Support under Diablo was quirky/broken. I'll run another test in the next day to see if I can get it running with a stock Diablo install.

Thanks, looking forward to it. Would appreciate an option of connecting to the IT by the name, not the IP address.

just a bump, brontide please let us know if there's any progress.

Good idea. I also added the domain-name. There are many more options to look into, and Avahi/Bonjour works on many systems.

By default you can also change the hostname in /etc/hosts
Because this is passed to the dhcpd your dns server will also bind the IP to the host. At least on many SOHO routers nowadays, this works. You won't need to install extra software for this.

To change the device name, you do that in /etc/hostname