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avahi_key_new() failed & avahi_normalize_name() failed getting spammed in logs

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I've noticed that this has been getting spammed in my logs lately. I'm not entirely sure what this means. Can anyone help me determine the root cause and how to stop it from happening? I've attached my diagnostics file.

Edited by clowncracker

Solved by clowncracker

That suggests there's a device on the network that contains an invalid name, the server name looks OK, there's a - in the name, but I would think that would be OK, but it may be worth resting without it. If it's not that, try removing the other network devices one at a time to see if you can find the culprit.

  • Author
6 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

That suggests there's a device on the network that contains an invalid name, the server name looks OK, there's a - in the name, but I would think that would be OK, but it may be worth resting without it. If it's not that, try removing the other network devices one at a time to see if you can find the culprit.


What’s odd is that my server name hasn’t changed in over seven years. I do have a VM called “Home Assistant,” but it’s had that name for about four years. The hostname on my network is homeassistant, though.

When you say there’s a device on the network, do you mean something tied to my server? It wouldn’t be a random Wi-Fi device, right? If that’s the case, the issue would have to be related to Docker or the VM, correct?

Edited by clowncracker

It could be any other device connected to your network.

  • Author
  • Solution

For anyone who stumbles upon this, this was a Windows issue, it has nothing to do with a device being named incorrectly. This is what I had to do to in Windows to fix the issue:

Windows Update

→ Advanced options

→ Delivery Optimization

→ Allow downloads from other PCs = Off

  • 1 month later...

@clowncracker thanks for your post about this obscure Windows Update setting! I "stumbled upon" your post while trying to diagnose an mDNS network storm that triggered the same avahi error messages that you had. In my case the errors were on my pfSense firewall, which runs the avahi package to manage discovery between vLANs. I didn't even suspect Windows as the source of the problem until I found your post, but turning off that Windows update setting stopped the problem instantly. Then I went back through my logs and found the whole thing started a couple of weeks ago, immediately after I reluctantly "upgraded" a Windows 10 PC to Windows 11.

For anyone else stumbling upon this thread, in my case the first symptom of a problem was in my Matter server logs, which showed thousands of these errors:

2026-02-05 23:50:13.902 (Dummy-2) CHIP_ERROR [chip.native.DIS] DNSSD packet parsing failed (for non-srv records)
2026-02-05 23:50:13.902 (Dummy-2) CHIP_ERROR [chip.native.DIS] DNSSD packet parsing failed (for SRV records)

Also should mention that my network also has a Home Assistant VM running. I don't think that has anything to do with this, but it seems like a coincidence worth mentioning in case there is some connection I don't understand.

On 12/25/2025 at 7:01 PM, clowncracker said:

For anyone who stumbles upon this, this was a Windows issue, it has nothing to do with a device being named incorrectly. This is what I had to do to in Windows to fix the issue:

Windows Update

→ Advanced options

→ Delivery Optimization

→ Allow downloads from other PCs = Off

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