add mdns-reflector

[mnaiman]

Hi,

I just find mdns-reflector.
It is drop in replacement for unsupported mdns-repeater (solves #210)

I have just compiled binary and replaced, reboot and it works with current plugin config!
Key advantage is IPv6 support. Without IPv6 I cant get to work Matter protocol which requires mDNS and IPv6.
With this it works like charm.

Is it possible to replace unsupported binary in OPNsense or clone plugin with new binary?

Thanks

[fichtner]

thanks, link is https://github.com/vfreex/mdns-reflector

I'll just let this sit here for a bit and let other's weigh in

[mnaiman]

Ah, sorry, forgot to include a link.
Idea is to fork plugin os-mdns-repeater and create for reflector. No code change in step 0 is necessary,it just works. In future if there will be interest there are additional features like https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=43649.msg242916#msg242916

So far Im running with repeter plugin and during every boot this script (/usr/local/etc/rc.syshook.d/early/99-mdns_reflector_build.sh) is run to compile and replace binary - so far no issues.

#!/bin/sh

echo "[mdns_reflector_build] Compiling early..."

cd /root/mdns-reflector-main/src || {
  echo "[mdns_reflector_build] ERROR: Source path not found"
  exit 1
}

cc main.c daemon.c logging.c mcast.c reflection_zone.c reflector.c -o mdns-reflector
chmod +x mdns-reflector

echo "[mdns_reflector_build] Replacing mdns-repeater..."
rm -f /usr/local/bin/mdns-repeater
cp mdns-reflector /usr/local/bin/mdns-repeater
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/mdns-repeater

echo "[mdns_reflector_build] Done."

[fichtner]

The road to success is adding mdns-reflector to FreeBSD ports and we can simply change the dependency and worry about the rename later. We don't need a code copy.

[sopex]

mdns-repeater is dead dead...

So this is probably a nice alternative to waiting indefinitely

[fichtner]

Could be, but I want to choose our battles wisely :)

[edominicci]

With Matter taking the spot for home automation and with the IPv6 requirement for it, this is a must-have replacement for the old mdns-repeater.

[fichtner]

I've spent a decade on FreeBSD ports contributions only to realise people like you are completely right but sadly nobody cares over there. Good luck to anybody else, because I'm not interested in advocacy for FreeBSD ports.

If someone wants to make a PR to our ports tree under opnsense category feel free to do so. A chance of merging is much more likely this way.

Cheers,
Franco

[qgazq]

Hi I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. I was trying to look at why the mdns-repeater has a limit of 5 interfaces. The short answer (as far as I can see) is it doesn't, it has a limit of 20, but the help text wasn't updated on the change which added it.
Anyway as part of that I found a few things, and this thread, and though this would be a good place for them. You'd rather it was a separate issue, or there is already another discussion please let me know.

At the moment opnsense seems to be using the same mdns-repeater from the freebsd ports. I don't fully understand the mechanism the ports use to pull the source, but from the dates and version it seems its the 1.11 from https://github.com/kennylevinsen/mdns-repeater/ with then a freebsd patch.
That github now redirects to https://github.com/geekman/mdns-repeater where there has been more work done, including adding the freebsd patch, so in theory the port doesn't need the patch if it updated. However there hasn't been a "release" with that in, and as I say I don't know how the ports mechanism pulls in source, maybe it can only handle releases? (Edit: It looks like you can set GH_TAGNAME to a commit rather than a tag) Either way the master branch doesn't have IPv6 support yet; there is a pull request from 2024 which is still open. So it doesn't look like an easy win coming from there.

This thread is about https://github.com/vfreex/mdns-reflector which is nominally a drop in replacement, but doesn't exist in freebsd ports, and hasn't had any commits in 3 years (and they seem to be docs and config, most of the work was 5 years ago), slightly longer ago than mdns-repeater. So I'm not sure its particularly well maintained either.

A better option might be
https://github.com/dennypage/mdns-bridge
This was last updated 3 and 4 weeks ago. And more promising, the freebsd port of it (and so opnsense), seems to have the update from 4 weeks ago (so only one fairly recently release behind).
It (claims it) has IPv6 support, and much more configurable filters than mdns-repeater, so overall seems like it might be a better solution.
The issue however would be the opnsense plugin would need more than a dependency change, it would really need a new plugin to configure the extra options.

My current feeling is maybe manually pull and configure mdns-bridge, see how it goes. If it works well, then it might be worth the effort to wrap it with a new plugin rather than chasing various upstreams?
Does that seem sensible / are there other options / considerations I've missed?

Regards
Gary

[dennypage]

A better option might be https://github.com/dennypage/mdns-bridge
This was last updated 3 and 4 weeks ago. And more promising, the freebsd port of it (and so opnsense),
seems to have the update from 4 weeks ago (so only one fairly recently release behind).
It (claims it) has IPv6 support, and much more configurable filters than mdns-repeater, so overall seems
like it might be a better solution.

Yes, mdns-bridge fully supports IPv6. FWIW, the latest release, v2.4.0, was updated in FreeBSD ports on December 17.

[sopex]

https://github.com/dennypage/mdns-bridge is probably the way forward here for multiple reasons.
There is not necessarily a need to expose all of its options.

[fichtner]

@sopex if you can build a simple plugin that would be acceptable and we'll simply deprecate mdns-repeater

[sopex]

I am not against it, but I don't use mDNS, so I may not be the best person for this.

[ZephireNZ]

Just came across this after wanting to set up Matter and discovering existing implementations don't support IPv6.

I had already done some effort previously to get os-udpbroadcastrelay updated, I'll have a crack at creating os-mdns-bridge plugin

[mnaiman]

Just came across this after wanting to set up Matter and discovering existing implementations don't support IPv6.

I had already done some effort previously to get os-udpbroadcastrelay updated, I'll have a crack at creating os-mdns-bridge plugin

Matter is exactly reason why I proposed mdns-reflector (https://github.com/vfreex/mdns-reflector) as drop in replacement. It is ok to download mdns-repeater plugin and replace just binary and it works.

Other binaries need different parameters and needs plugin rewrite to support.