Not sure when (in the last day or two, I think) but I’ve lost the ability to reference my Jackpot controller’s FluidNC web UI by hostname.
It’s been working fine for a couple of months, always available at http://fluidnc.local but now I can only get to it by IP address. It works fine by IP address, but the hostname should work also.
The settings page still shows that it thinks the hostname should be fluidnc
You are using STA mode? Have you made any changes to your home network or had updates?
Windows updates can break things like name resolution, but this is odd.
What type of Router or wireless access point do you use? Depending on that, we may be able to change things on that side to help your windows machine find your FluidNC.
The dot local address uses mDNS/avahi/bonjour. You used to install it in windows via a mac printer driver. But I don’t know if that’s still the case. That kind of DNS happens between computers on the same network and doesn’t need a server/manager to do that work. The address is almost always <hostname>.local.
The hostname resolution is not done via mDNS. It is usually serviced by your local router. When FluidNC asks for a DHCP address, it also passes its hostname and asks for the DNS servers. The router then keeps a table of these for all the computers it has given addresses to and resolves the hostnames to IPs. If you are in AP mode, then FluidNC is doing all of this itself.
If you use a VPN, that would break it. If FluidNC was holding an dhcp address for too long, that would do it. Or some combination of things stopping and starting could cause it.
I think what it actually turned out to be was restarting my entire mesh wifi system - I had an internet outage yesterday morning which required a full restart of the cable modem and all 4 of my mesh wifi nodes.
In any case, it’s working again which is good enough for me.
