| Mac OS X 10.3 or later normally treats hostnames ending in “.local” only as Bonjour(formerly “Rendezvous”) hosts. However, some network administrators also assign .localhostnames. This document explains how to look up .local names using Bonjour and standardDNS.
The Multicast DNS feature of Rendezvous technology allows devices on a local networkto connect to each other by name without a separate DNS server. See technical document107174, “Mac OS X 10.2: AboutMulticast DNS” for details. By default, any hostname ending in .localis treated as a Rendezvous host rather than by querying the DNS server entries inNetwork preferences. >
Though the .local domain is not defined as a valid top-level domain on the Internet,some private networks have DNS servers that assign hostnames in the .local domain.In its default state, Mac OS X 10.3 does not use the DNS server to resolve these names.This may result in unexpected failures to connect to .local hostnames defined by yourserver. If .local names are assigned by a DNS server on your network, use the solutionbelow to configure Mac OS X 10 to look up .local names in both ways. If the host isnot available via Rendezvous, the query will be tried using unicast DNS to contactthe DNS server.
Mac OS X 10.4 and later:
Open the Network preference pane in System Preferences. Select the desired networkinterface and click Configure. Add “local” to the Search Domains field. If you havemultiple entries in this field, be sure that “local” is first, and separate them withcommas. For example:
local, apple.com
Mac OS X 10.3 – 10.3.9:
To create the script, execute each of these commands in Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/).Each command is preceded by the dollar sign ($), which represents the Terminal prompt.You must be logged with an administrator account to perform these steps. After thefirst command (sudo), you will be prompted to enter your administrator password. Aftertyping each command, press Return to execute it. After entering the “cat” command,you will not see a prompt ($) for the next four lines, though you must still pressReturn after each. For the line that says “[Control-D]“, you will hold down the Controlkey, then press D.
The commands:
$ sudo su
$ cd /usr/sbin
$ cat > EnableUnicastDotLocal
#!/bin/tcsh
echo domain local > /etc/resolver/local.1
grep -v domain /etc/resolv.conf | grep -v search >> /etc/resolver/local.1
echo search_order 2 >> /etc/resolver/local.1
[Control-D]
$ chmod +x EnableUnicastDotLocal
$ exit
These steps create an executable shell script named “EnableUnicastDotLocal” that willcreate and populate the necessary configuration files to enable dual lookups of .localhostnames.<
To run the script, execute this command:
$ sudo /usr/sbin/EnableUnicastDotLocal
Important: The address of the DNS server configured by this script for .localname lookups will not change automatically if your default DNS server address changes.(Your DNS server address may change if you change network locations, if a change ismade by your DHCP server administrator, or if you change it manually in Network preferences.)To change the DNS server used for lookups in the .local domain, you must run thisscript again. To disable unicast DNS lookups entirely after running this script, deletethe file /etc/resolver/local.1.
Note: For the Active Directory plug-in to work with .local domains, you mustupdate to Mac OS X 10.3.3 or later.
SOURCE:
Shared with me by a friend David Waits @ work- the URL:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107800
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