Catalina cannot resolve servers in the .local domain without the domain being specified

bonjourdnsdomainNetwork

tl;dr In the Catalina terminal ping lan-services.local works but ping lan-services does not

I have a 2012 Mac mini that I just installed Catalina on from scratch (i.e. blank SSD and USB install) connected to a home network via Ethernet that cannot find servers / devices on the LAN without appending '.local' to the name. This was not needed before Catalina on the same LAN set-up (i.e. the only thing I can think of that's changed is the OS on the Mac).

e.g.

~% ping lan-services
ping: cannot resolve lan-services: Unknown host
~ % ping lan-services.local
PING lan-services.local (192.168.1.10): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=5.480 ms
...
^C

Network Config for Ethernet

IPv4 configured Using DHCP
IPv6 configured Link-local only
DNS set to 1.1.1.1 and 208.67.220.220 (set by router)
Advanced / DNS / Search Domains is local (no dot as per help examples)
Mac Firewall is OFF
Everything else has not been changed (i.e. default to Catalina)

/etc/hosts file

No entries have been added (where not needed on Mojave)

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1   localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost

VPN and Anti-Virus

VPN software installed BUT NOT active – this is the same as the previous Mojave install
Two VPNs Windscribe and Bitdefender (I could not load Bitdefender without its VPN software)
Disabling Bitdefender 'Shield' does not help

Target servers / devices

Internet router is DNS server with a default domain as local
Some set up as static IPv4 in their config files – some dynamic
Internet router has static IPv4 assignments for the servers / devices
ISP does not support IPv6 so the router is set to RADVD (link-local) but NOT bound to an external interface
Finder correctly shows the server I am trying to PING
Finder opens the server shares fine (it is a Pi using Netatalk / AFP for file sharing NOT SMB)
Some devices have IPv4 only, some have IPv4 and IPv6 stacks loaded
No devices has any firewall settings that would stop PING or SSH

scutil –dns output

DNS configuration

resolver #1
  search domain[0] : local
  nameserver[0] : 1.1.1.1
  nameserver[1] : 208.67.220.220
  if_index : 5 (en1)
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000002 (Reachable)

resolver #2
  domain   : local
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 300000

resolver #3
  domain   : 254.169.in-addr.arpa
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 300200

resolver #4
  domain   : 8.e.f.ip6.arpa
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 300400

resolver #5
  domain   : 9.e.f.ip6.arpa
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 300600

resolver #6
  domain   : a.e.f.ip6.arpa
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 300800

resolver #7
  domain   : b.e.f.ip6.arpa
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 301000

DNS configuration (for scoped queries)

resolver #1
  search domain[0] : local
  nameserver[0] : 1.1.1.1
  nameserver[1] : 208.67.220.220
  if_index : 5 (en1)
  flags    : Scoped, Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000002 (Reachable)

Things checked

A search turned up this question (though it seems to be a
reverse issue) and the solution of adding mdnsactivedirectory via
discoveryutil but that program seems to have been deprecated in Catalina – this was not required in Mojave.
I may not be the only one having this issue (going by this Apple Forum question) but no domain is shown and the 'hint' is either
talk to Apple or look at Active Directory (not installed here).
Turning on file sharing does not help.
Checked sons Windows 10 PC – he can reach devices without the .local as well as devices with the .local (pin lan-services checked
before pin lan-services.local) and is running iTunes for his music.
A note from above test today I'm not running iTunes as Apple changed to iTune to the Music App
Just installed Discovery – DNS-SD Browser from eh App Store (thanks to Lily Ballard for this FOC package). This shows its picking up services from AFP over TCP and picking up all the devices on my home LAN (easier to play with):

Workarounds I'm trying to avoid

Adding entries into /etc/hosts
Adding .local to the end of each server name by hand – me being lazy (though this is what I am currently doing)
Installing ANOTHER DHCP / DNS server (e.g. pi-hole / pfSense etc)
Downgrading to Mojave
Moving to SMB shares – one server does not seem to support SMB without a whole series of faff for security and performance is pathetic. TBH also I do not have a great deal of practice with SAMBA security (basic shares fine) and no spare cash in project to upgrade old servers if Samba does not run on them.

Best Answer

I had the same problem.

I tried to SSH to my RaspberryPi from raspberrypi.local, but it wouldn't connect. ping command did not connect too.

I was able to SSH connect and ping using the terminal app on my iPad.

In my case, the cause was the DNS settings.

On my Mac, DNS was set to 8.8.8.8. So I removed the DNS record from Network System Preferences. Then I was able to connect to SSH.

I still can't reach the ping, but it's good that I can connect to SSH.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Mac OS X Mountain Lion – DNS resolving uses wrong order on VPN via dial-up connection

I had the same problem on my Mac, and after fixing it I have figured out that it was caused by FortiClient (VPN client). Even when FortiClient was disconnected - it's DNS still appeared in the scutil.

The solution for me was:

scutil
> list ".*DNS"

This will show you a list of all DNS configs, that will look something like:

subKey [0] = State:/Network/Global/DNS <br>
subKey [1] = State:/Network/MulticastDNS<br>
subKey [2] = State:/Network/OpenVPN/DNS<br>
subKey [3] = State:/Network/OpenVPN/OldDNS<br>
subKey [4] = State:/Network/PrivateDNS<br>
subKey [5] = State:/Network/Service/forticlientsslvpn/DNS <br>

To check each of them run: (until you find the problematic one)

> get key_name
> d.show

…and to fix it run:

> get key_name
> d.remove ServerAddresses
> set key_name

This is how it looked on my machine:

> get State:/Network/Service/forticlientsslvpn/DNS 
> d.show
<dictionary> {
  ServerAddresses : <array> {
    0 : 192.168.30.6
    1 : 192.168.30.15
  }
  SupplementalMatchDomains : <array> {
    0 :
  }
  SupplementalMatchOrders : <array> {
    0 : 100000
  }
}
> d.remove ServerAddresses
> d.show
<dictionary> {
  SupplementalMatchDomains : <array> {
    0 :
  }
  SupplementalMatchOrders : <array> {
    0 : 100000
  }
}
> set State:/Network/Service/forticlientsslvpn/DNS
> exit

MacOS – Do /etc/resolver/ files work in Mountain Lion for DNS resolution

This question seems a bit old, but I'm going to answer it anyways as I had a similar problem:

Yes, this works.

Your first problem is that you obviously have the wrong IP (8.8.8.8 instead of 203.12.160.35) in /etc/resolver/apple.com. Verify that the contents of this file is really:

nameserver 203.12.160.35

Then scutil --dns should have an entry like this:

resolver #8
  domain   : apple.com
  nameserver[0] : 203.12.160.35

The second problem is that you tried to verify it using nslookup which does not use the DNS resolution mechanisms of OS X. If you look at the man page of nslookup you will find this:

Mac OS X NOTICE
   The nslookup command does not use the host name and address resolution or the DNS 
   query routing mechanisms used by other processes running on Mac OS X.  The results of 
   name or address queries printed by nslookup may differ from those found by other
   processes that use the Mac OS X native name and address resolution mechanisms. The 
   results of DNS queries may also differ from queries that use the Mac OS X DNS routing 
   library.

To check your DNS config you could do

dns-sd -G v4 images.apple.com

and verify if it yields the same IP as

nslookup images.apple.com 203.12.160.35