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.

Metric	Scope	Dimensions	Units
servers_queries	global	success, failed	queries/s
cache_size	global	size	entries
cache_operations	global	insertions, evictions	operations/s
cache_performance	global	hist, misses	events/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