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Sunshine Avahi auto-discovery fails on SteamOS due to mDNS conflict #5140

@angben65

Description

@angben65

Is there an existing issue for this?

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Is your issue described in the documentation?

  • I have read the documentation

Is your issue present in the latest beta/pre-release?

This issue is present in the latest pre-release

Describe the Bug

On SteamOS, Sunshine’s Avahi mDNS advertisement fails because Steam’s steamwebhelper appears to also bind to the mDNS port 5353 when Steam is running in the default Gamescope session. Even after disabling systemd-resolved mDNS, Avahi still logs:

Failed to add service 'steamdeck' of type '_nvstream._tcp', ignoring service group ... : Not permitted

and ss -ulpn | grep ':5353' shows steamwebhelper attached to 224.0.0.251:5353. This makes Avahi think another mDNS stack is active, so the Sunshine service is ignored. As a result, Sunshine auto-discovery via mDNS cannot work reliably on SteamOS while Steam is open.

What I confirmed:

avahi-daemon loads the Sunshine service file correctly.

systemd-resolved has MulticastDNS=no.

The remaining mDNS conflict comes from steamwebhelper.

If Steam is not running, Avahi can start normally, but with Steam open the conflict returns.

Possible fixes:

Let Sunshine advertise via a different mechanism than Avahi on SteamOS.

Add a Sunshine option to disable mDNS auto-discovery entirely and rely on manual IP pairing.

Investigate whether Sunshine can register under a different service discovery method that does not conflict with Steam’s mDNS behavior on SteamOS.

Expected Behavior

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Additional Context

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Host Operating System

Linux

Operating System Version

SteamOS

Architecture

amd64/x86_64

Package

Linux - flathub/flatpak

GPU Type

AMD

GPU Model

Ryzen Z1 Extreme

GPU Driver/Mesa Version

Mesa 25.3.0

Capture Method

None

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Online logs

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