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dns-sd(1) General Commands Manual dns-sd(1)

NAME
dns-sd -- Multicast DNS (mDNS) & DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD) Test Tool

SYNOPSIS
dns-sd -E

dns-sd -F

dns-sd -R name type domain port [key=value ...]

dns-sd -B type domain

dns-sd -L name type domain

dns-sd -P name type domain port host IP [key=value ...]

dns-sd -q name rrtype rrclass

dns-sd -Z type domain

dns-sd -G v4/v6/v4v6 name

dns-sd -V

DESCRIPTION
The dns-sd command is a network diagnostic tool, much like ping(8) or
traceroute(8). However, unlike those tools, most of its functionality is
not implemented in the dns-sd executable itself, but in library code that
is available to any application. The library API that dns-sd uses is docu-
mented in /usr/include/dns_sd.h. The dns-sd command replaces the older
mDNS command.

The dns-sd command is primarily intended for interactive use. Because its
command-line arguments and output format are subject to change, invoking it
from a shell script will generally be fragile. Additionally, the asynchro-
nous nature of DNS Service Discovery does not lend itself easily to script-
oriented programming. For example, calls like "browse" never complete; the
action of performing a "browse" sets in motion machinery to notify the
client whenever instances of that service type appear or disappear from the
network. These notifications continue to be delivered indefinitely, for
minutes, hours, or even days, as services come and go, until the client ex-
plicitly terminates the call. This style of asynchronous interaction works
best with applications that are either multi-threaded, or use a main event-
handling loop to receive keystrokes, network data, and other asynchronous
event notifications as they happen.
If you wish to perform DNS Service Discovery operations from a scripting
language, then the best way to do this is not to execute the dns-sd command
and then attempt to decipher the textual output, but instead to directly
call the DNS-SD APIs using a binding for your chosen language.
For example, if you are programming in Ruby, then you can directly call
DNS-SD APIs using the dnssd package documented at
<http://rubyforge.org/projects/dnssd/>.
Similar bindings for other languages are also in development.

dns-sd -E
return a list of domains recommended for registering(advertising) ser-
vices.

dns-sd -F
return a list of domains recommended for browsing services.

Normally, on your home network, the only domain you are likely to see is
"local". However if your network administrator has created Domain Enu-
meration records, then you may also see other recommended domains for
registering and browsing.

dns-sd -R name type domain port [key=value ...]
register (advertise) a service in the specified domain with the given
name and type as listening (on the current machine) on port.

name can be arbitrary unicode text, containing any legal unicode charac-
ters (including dots, spaces, slashes, colons, etc. without restric-
tion), up to 63 UTF-8 bytes long. type must be of the form "_app-
proto._tcp" or "_app-proto._udp", where "app-proto" is an application
protocol name registered at
http://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xml.

domain is the domain in which to register the service. In current im-
plementations, only the local multicast domain "local" is supported. In
the future, registering will be supported in any arbitrary domain that
has a working DNS Update server [RFC 2136]. The domain "." is a synonym
for "pick a sensible default" which today means "local".

port is a number from 0 to 65535, and is the TCP or UDP port number upon
which the service is listening.

Additional attributes of the service may optionally be described by
key/value pairs, which are stored in the advertised service's DNS TXT
record. Allowable keys and values are listed with the service registra-
tion at
http://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xml.

dns-sd -B type domain
browse for instances of service type in domain.

For valid types see
http://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xml.
as described above. Omitting the domain or using "." means "pick a sen-
sible default."

dns-sd -L name type domain
look up and display the information necessary to contact and use the
named service: the hostname of the machine where that service is avail-
able, the port number on which the service is listening, and (if
present) TXT record attributes describing properties of the service.

Note that in a typical application, browsing may only happen rarely,
while lookup (or "resolving") happens every time the service is used.
For example, a user browses the network to pick a default printer fairly
rarely, but once a default printer has been picked, that named service
is resolved to its current IP address and port number every time the
user presses Cmd-P to print.

dns-sd -P name type domain port host IP [key=value ...]
create a proxy advertisement for a service running on(offered by) some
other machine. The two new options are Host, a name for the device and
IP, the address of it.

The service for which you create a proxy advertisement does not neces-
sarily have to be on your local network. You can set up a local proxy
for a website on the Internet.

dns-sd -q name rrtype rrclass
look up any DNS name, resource record type, and resource record class,
not necessarily DNS-SD names and record types. If rrtype is not speci-
fied, it queries for the IPv4 address of the name, if rrclass is not
specified, IN class is assumed. If the name is not a fully qualified do-
main name, then search domains may be appended.

dns-sd -Z type domain
browse for service instances and display output in zone file format.

dns-sd -G v4/v6/v4v6 name
look up the IP address information of the name. If v4 is specified, the
IPv4 address of the name is looked up, if v6 is specified the IPv6 ad-
dress is looked up. If v4v6 is specified both the IPv4 and IPv6 address
is looked up. If the name is not a fully qualified domain name, then
search domains may be appended.

dns-sd -V
return the version of the currently running daemon/system service.

EXAMPLES
To advertise the existence of LPR printing service on port 515 on this ma-
chine, such that it will be discovered by the Mac OS X printing software
and other DNS-SD compatible printing clients, use:

dns-sd -R "My Test" _printer._tcp. . 515 pdl=application/postscript

For this registration to be useful, you need to actually have LPR service
available on port 515. Advertising a service that does not exist is not
very useful, and will be confusing and annoying to other people on the net-
work.

Similarly, to advertise a web page being served by an HTTP server on port
80 on this machine, such that it will show up in the Bonjour list in Safari
and other DNS-SD compatible Web clients, use:

dns-sd -R "My Test" _http._tcp . 80 path=/path-to-page.html

To find the advertised web pages on the local network (the same list that
Safari shows), use:

dns-sd -B _http._tcp

While that command is running, in another window, try the dns-sd -R example
given above to advertise a web page, and you should see the "Add" event re-
ported to the dns-sd -B window. Now press Ctrl-C in the dns-sd -R window
and you should see the "Remove" event reported to the dns-sd -B window.

In the example below, the www.apple.com web page is advertised as a service
called "apple", running on a target host called apple.local, which resolves
to 17.149.160.49.

dns-sd -P apple _http._tcp "" 80 apple.local 17.149.160.49

The Bonjour menu in the Safari web browser will now show "apple". The same
IP address can be reached by entering apple.local in the web browser. In
either case, the request will be resolved to the IP address and browser
will show contents associated with www.apple.com.

If a client wants to be notified of changes in server state, it can initi-
ate a query for the service's particular record and leave it running. For
example, to monitor the status of an iChat user you can use:

dns-sd -q someone@ex1._presence._tcp.local txt

Everytime status of that user(someone) changes, you will see a new TXT
record result reported.

You can also query for a unicast name like www.apple.com and monitor its
status.

dns-sd -q www.apple.com

FILES
/usr/bin/dns-sd