Umbrel website offline after few days - only reboot helps

Support and Troubleshooting
1

So i have this problem for quite some time now and didnt find a solution yet..

I’ve got umbrelos installed on a raspberrypi 5 with a SSD, connected to LAN and gave it a static IP Adress.
My umbrel.local goes offline after some days/weeks for no reason, and i cant access it from browser. After a reboot umbrel works just fine again.

Some services like homebridge still run and work, but web interface apps dont. My raspberry is still accessable via SSH. so i checked systemctl status before and after rebooting and found this:

# before reboot
           │ ├─avahi-daemon.service
           │ │ ├─250 "avahi-daemon: running [umbrel-697.local]"
           │ │ └─260 "avahi-daemon: chroot helper"

# after reboot 
           │ ├─avahi-daemon.service
           │ │ ├─272 "avahi-daemon: running [umbrel.local]"
           │ │ └─283 "avahi-daemon: chroot helper"

Does anyone know if this is normal behavior? docker containers regarding postgres database and kitchen owl are all still up, but not accessable via known link..
i didnt check if umbrel-697.local is a working webpage but i wouldnt assume..

2

Unless the IP is outside the range of DHCP. You may have a problem with another device with the same IP.

3

so i have checked again, umbrel is the only one with this ipv4 adress.
But an interesting fact is that ahavi daemon once again changed its value, now it’s

root@umbrel:~# systemctl status avahi-daemon
● avahi-daemon.service - Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/avahi-daemon.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2025-08-22 08:47:38 UTC; 2 days ago
TriggeredBy: ● avahi-daemon.socket
   Main PID: 272 (avahi-daemon)
     Status: "avahi-daemon 0.8 starting up."
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 4770)
     Memory: 2.8M
        CPU: 8min 22.123s
     CGroup: /system.slice/avahi-daemon.service
             ├─272 "avahi-daemon: running [umbrel-2.local]"
             └─283 "avahi-daemon: chroot helper"

when i open “umbrel-2.local” in Browser i can access my umbrel again.. why is that? why does the DNS change?

4

Okay, I found my solution…

It works when I change my browser link to
http://umbrel.fritz.box instead of http://umbrel.local.

Why? Regarding ChatGPT:

  • The DNS name umbrel.fritz.box is assigned directly by the router (FritzBox in my case). This is reliable and won’t change.
  • The .local domain, on the other hand, comes from mDNS (Avahi/Bonjour). Every device on the network can announce its own .local name.

What happens:
When Umbrel restarts its network connection, Avahi announces umbrel.local again. If there’s already a conflict (another device claims the same name, or Avahi thinks so), it automatically renames itself to umbrel-2.local, umbrel-3.local, etc. That’s why the old umbrel.local link sometimes stops working.

Using umbrel.fritz.box is stable because it comes directly from the router’s DNS and avoids these conflicts.

5

ok