My Start9 server is working a treat. Love that I can run Knots.
But there are a few services that I cannot get to run on my Firefox browser on Linux.
Mempool, Sparrow Wallet, Vaultwarden,… anything that runs on .LOCAL comes up with the error that is can’t find the server. (Anything running via Tor - .ONION works perfectly)
Yet, all of these work fine on my crumby old iPad! So what is my Linux Mint 22 system doing wrong? I’ve seen other threads say something about Bonjour but I have not been able to find that on the Mint Software Manager.
OK, with further research (You seriously have to have nerves of steel with Linux and a good nose for hunting down solutions…)
There is a config file in Linux (and for each flavour it could be in a similar sounding place) called:
'/etc/systemd/resolved.conf`
In that file you have to set two options on:
MulticastDNS=yes
LLMNR=yes
(They may have the ‘#’ in front of them to comment them out. Delete the # and set to ‘yes’)
Restart your Linux machine and reconnect to Start9 via web interface. Go to Sparrow or Mempool and click on Launch UI. Voila!
Now the only annoying thing is it gives the usual warning of “This site is not secure”, even though I’ve done the Certificate thing and set security.enterprise_roots.enabled to true in Firefox. So probably another rabbit hole I have to go down. It never ends with Linux… But worth it to not have to Windows 11.
Ah, I remember what the deal is with the “Not Secure” error.
It’s the way Firefox is installed on Mint. You have the option of using a “System Package” version or a “FlatPak” version. The FlatPak version worked fine in terms of Trusting the Root CA and all that, while for some reason (security experts feel free to wade in) the System Package version his issues, which is what I run.
Why not run the FlatPak version, then? Because IT has issues printing to my local laserjet. Tried fixing it with Flatseal but it kept forgetting my preferences and losing the printer. Too annoying, so sticking to the System Package and just have to put up with “insecure” local websites. Meh!
Hi Mark, nice to see you got there in the end, baring a few questions.
Flatpaks are great because they containerize apps so they they just work. They have all their dependencies inside those containers and don’t need to refer to anything outside in the standard packaging paradigm of your distro… apt in your case.
There are drawbacks though… and your experience should be the exactly opposit of what you state. Since they don’t rely on the host OS, a whole bunch of stuff isn’t passed to them from the host and they don’t have access to things in the host. Root CAs on the host, configs in systemd-resolved etc. (plus a few more, such as theming and disk space use). While this improves over time as secure means of passing things between to two are added, it can be annoying.
I’m confused by your experience, but either way, you can add certificate exceptions directly in browsers if you want to force errors to disappear.
