Skip to main content

Dnsmasq DNS Forwarder

Dnsmasq is a lightweight, easy to configure DNS forwarder, designed to provide DNS (and optionally DHCP and TFTP) services to a small-scale network.

This module monitors one or more Dnsmasq DNS Forwarder instances, depending on your configuration.

It collects DNS cache statistics by reading the response on the following query:

;; opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 37862
;; flags: rd; QUERY: 7, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;cachesize.bind. CH TXT
;insertions.bind. CH TXT
;evictions.bind. CH TXT
;hits.bind. CH TXT
;misses.bind. CH TXT
;servers.bind. CH TXT

Metrics

All metrics have "dnsmasq." prefix.

MetricScopeDimensionsUnits
servers_queriesglobalsuccess, failedqueries/s
cache_sizeglobalsizeentries
cache_operationsglobalinsertions, evictionsoperations/s
cache_performanceglobalhist, missesevents/s

Configuration

Edit the go.d/dnsmasq.conf configuration file using edit-config from the Netdata config directory, which is typically at /etc/netdata.

cd /etc/netdata # Replace this path with your Netdata config directory
sudo ./edit-config go.d/dnsmasq.conf

Needs only address, here is an example with two jobs:

jobs:
- name: local
address: '127.0.0.1:53'

- name: remote
address: '203.0.113.0:53'

For all available options, see the dnsmasq collector's configuration file.

Troubleshooting

To troubleshoot issues with the dnsmasq collector, run the go.d.plugin with the debug option enabled. The output should give you clues as to why the collector isn't working.

  • Navigate to the plugins.d directory, usually at /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/. If that's not the case on your system, open netdata.conf and look for the plugins setting under [directories].

    cd /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/
  • Switch to the netdata user.

    sudo -u netdata -s
  • Run the go.d.plugin to debug the collector:

    ./go.d.plugin -d -m dnsmasq

Do you have any feedback for this page? If so, you can open a new issue on our netdata/learn repository.