Technical Q&A QA1339

The state of mDNSResponder

Q: Is it possible to retrieve information regarding the current internal state of mDNSResponder?

A: Is it possible to retrieve information regarding the current internal state of mDNSResponder?

Yes. Starting in Mac OS X 10.3, you can send a SIGINFO signal to the mDNSResponder daemon which will cause it to output its current internal state to the system log (/var/log/system.log). This allows you to retrieve information about mDNSResponder's cached DNS resource records, and it allows you to see the active DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD) operations. You can send the SIGINFO signal from the Terminal by typing:

$ sudo killall -info mDNSResponder

Listing 1 Example system.log containing mDNSResponder state info.

mDNSResponder-58.4 (Jan 28 2004 16:31:36) ---- BEGIN STATE LOG ----
Active: PTR  en1     26 _ftp._tcp.local. PTR Ice Cube._ftp._tcp.local.
Inactive: SRV  en1     22 Ice Cube._ftp._tcp.local. SRV Ice-Cube.local.
Inactive: TXT  en1      1 Ice Cube._ftp._tcp.local. TXT 
Inactive: PTR  en1     26 _ssh._tcp.local. PTR Ice Cube._ssh._tcp.local.
Inactive: Addr en1      4 Ice-Cube.local. Addr 10.0.1.2
Cache currently contains 5 records; 1 referenced by active questions
11251: ServiceBrowse       _http._tcp.local.
10755: ServiceBrowse       _ftp._tcp.local.
10499: ServiceBrowse       _webdav._tcp.local.
10243: ServiceBrowse       _nfs._tcp.local.
 9731: ServiceBrowse       _afpovertcp._tcp.local.
 8195: ServiceRegistration Ice Cube._ssh._tcp.local.
 7939: ServiceRegistration Ice Cube._ftp._tcp.local.
mDNSResponder-58.4 (Jan 28 2004 16:31:36) ---- END STATE LOG ----

Document Revision History

Date	Notes
2006-10-03	Updated SIGUSR1 comment for Linux, BSD, and Solaris.
2004-02-06	New document that explains how to obtain information regarding the internal state of mDNSResponder.