Homekit bridge in an isolated network and avahi in reflector mode

Configuration
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1

I am trying to follow the documentation for HomeKit Bridge. According to one part,

The advertise_ip option can be used to run this integration even inside an ephemeral Docker container with network isolation enabled… This feature requires running an mDNS forwarder on your Docker host, e.g., avahi-daemon in reflector mode.

I was relieved to see that this configuration exists since I am running a rootless docker and I cannot run in host-network mode. Howeever, I have not been able to get this configured on HomeAssistant and my rootless docker. In particular, I don’t know what the developers have in mind since both HomeAssistant and avahi need to advertises on the same port (5353). So I cannot run both at the same time while port forwarding 5353.

I saw a couple posts here that create a service on avahi to advertise the homekit bridge (with some fields taken from .homekit.state). This actually works for me, but I am wondering if the documentation is inaccurate and using avahi in reflector mode is impossible.

2

Hi, I have a similar setup with Home Assistant docker container running on an internal docker network.
I’ve managed to get HomeKit bridge working with avahi-daemon reflector running on the host.

In /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf set allow-interfaces to include both your host interface name and docker bridge network interface which your container is attached to.
And also set enable-reflector to yes

[server]
allow-interfaces=<DOCKER_NETWORK_BRIDGE_IF>,<HOST_IF>
(...)

[publish]
enable-reflector=yes
(...)

In homeassistant configuration.yaml for the homekit set advertise_ip to IP of the host.

homekit:
  - name: HASS Bridge
    advertise_ip: '<HOST_IP>'
    port: 21065
    (...)

The last step is to set up the docker container port mapping for the homekit port -p 21065:21065.

I didn’t have to add any extra avahi service definitions or forward any additional ports (5353).
My understanding is that avahi-daemon relays service discovery requests between homeassistant docker network and the host network.