Title: Avahi set host name with short timeout
Tags: linux;zeroconf;avahi
Question: I'm trying to create a zeroconf app which allows one machine to be "host" which takes ownership of a certain hostname.
For example, machineA sets it's host name to 'testbox', and network devices can access it via 'testbox.local'.
But then I want machineB to set it's host name to 'testbox', and then I would like network devices to connect to machineB instead of machineA.
At the moment this is working to some degree, however different browsers cache the hostname for different periods of time.
Is there some way to configure avahi to broadcast the hostname with a short-lived TTL?

Here is the accepted answer: I looked long and hard for a solution to this, and am posting this answer just so I can mark it as correct and increase my accept rate.
I believe that: It can't be done.


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