DNS Lookup using .local domain

The .local Top Level Domain (TLD) is reserved by IANA in RFC 6762 as a domain dedicated for Multicast DNS. It should not be used in other use cases, such as on a local network. Ubuntu (LiquidFiles v4.x) will not look up hosts in the .local domain so you can't connect using DNS names like server.local, or running ping server.local using Ubuntu/LiquidFiles v4.x.

Unfortunately, Microsoft used to recommend using .local as a local domain for Active Directory deployments. Microsofts current recommendation is to not use .local as your local DNS domain. There are still many environments out there that are still using .local against current recommendations and probably up until you've read this article, you haven't run into any issues.

Long term, you should probably follow current recommendations and not use .local in your environment as you will almost certainly run into more and more issues moving forward.

Add your .local domain to DNS Search Domain

As a workaround, you can make Ubuntu resolve .local addresses my adding them to the DNS search configuration in Admin → System → Network, in the DNS tab.