1 .\" -*- tab-width: 4 -*-
3 .\" Copyright (c) 2004 Apple Computer, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
5 .\" Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
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14 .\" See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
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17 .\" $Log: dns-sd.1,v $
18 .\" Revision 1.6 2006/08/14 23:24:56 cheshire
19 .\" Re-licensed mDNSResponder daemon source code under Apache License, Version 2.0
21 .\" Revision 1.5 2005/07/04 23:12:35 cheshire
22 .\" <rdar://problem/4103628> The dns-sd command first appeared in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
24 .\" Revision 1.4 2005/02/16 02:29:32 cheshire
25 .\" Update terminology
27 .\" Revision 1.3 2005/02/10 22:35:28 cheshire
28 .\" <rdar://problem/3727944> Update name
30 .\" Revision 1.2 2004/09/24 18:33:05 cheshire
31 .\" <rdar://problem/3561780> Update man pages to clarify that mDNS and dns-sd are not intended for script use
33 .\" Revision 1.1 2004/09/22 22:46:25 cheshire
34 .\" Man page for dns-sd command-line tool
38 .Dd April 2004 \" Date
39 .Dt dns-sd 1 \" Document Title
40 .Os Darwin \" Operating System
44 .Nd Multicast DNS (mDNS) & DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD) Test Tool \" For whatis
47 .Nm Fl R Ar name type domain port Op Ar key=value ...
49 .Nm Fl B Ar type domain
51 .Nm Fl L Ar name type domain
56 command is a network diagnostic tool, much like
60 However, unlike those tools, most of its functionality is not implemented in the
62 executable itself, but in library code that is available to any application.
66 .Pa /usr/include/dns_sd.h .
69 command replaces the older
75 command is primarily intended for interactive use.
76 Because its command-line arguments and output format are subject to change,
77 invoking it from a shell script will generally be fragile. Additionally,
78 the asynchronous nature of DNS Service Discovery does
79 not lend itself easily to script-oriented programming. For example,
80 calls like "browse" never complete; the action of performing a "browse"
81 sets in motion machinery to notify the client whenever instances of
82 that service type appear or disappear from the network. These
83 notifications continue to be delivered indefinitely, for minutes,
84 hours, or even days, as services come and go, until the client
85 explicitly terminates the call. This style of asynchronous interaction
86 works best with applications that are either multi-threaded, or use a
87 main event-handling loop to receive keystrokes, network data, and other
88 asynchronous event notifications as they happen.
90 If you wish to perform DNS Service Discovery operations from a
91 scripting language, then the best way to do this is not to execute the
93 command and then attempt to decipher the textual output, but instead to
94 directly call the DNS-SD APIs using a binding for your chosen language.
96 For example, if you are programming in Ruby, then you can
97 directly call DNS-SD APIs using the dnssd package documented at
98 .Pa <http://rubyforge.org/projects/dnssd/> .
100 Similar bindings for other languages are also in development.
103 .It Nm Fl R Ar name type domain port Op Ar key=value ...
104 register (advertise) a service in the specified
110 as listening (on the current machine) on
114 can be arbitrary unicode text, containing any legal unicode characters
115 (including dots, spaces, slashes, colons, etc. without restriction),
116 up to 63 UTF-8 bytes long.
118 must be of the form "_app-proto._tcp" or "_app-proto._udp", where
119 "app-proto" is an application protocol name registered at
120 .Pa http://www.dns-sd.org/ServiceTypes.html .
123 is the domain in which to register the service.
124 In current implementations, only the local multicast domain "local" is
125 supported. In the future, registering will be supported in any arbitrary
126 domain that has a working DNS Update server [RFC 2136]. The
128 "." is a synonym for "pick a sensible default" which today
132 is a number from 0 to 65535, and is the TCP or UDP port number upon
133 which the service is listening.
135 Additional attributes of the service may optionally be described by
136 key/value pairs, which are stored in the advertised service's DNS TXT
137 record. Allowable keys and values are listed with the service
139 .Pa http://www.dns-sd.org/ServiceTypes.html .
140 .It Nm Fl B Ar type domain
141 browse for instances of service
149 .Pa http://www.dns-sd.org/ServiceTypes.html
150 as described above. Omitting the
152 or using "." means "pick a sensible default."
153 .It Nm Fl L Ar name type domain
154 look up and display the information necessary to contact and use the
155 named service: the hostname of the machine where that service is
156 available, the port number on which the service is listening, and (if
157 present) TXT record attributes describing properties of the service.
159 Note that in a typical application, browsing happens rarely, while lookup
160 (or "resolving") happens every time the service is used. For example, a
161 user browses the network to pick a default printer fairly rarely, but once
162 a default printer has been picked, that named service is resolved to its
163 current IP address and port number every time the user presses Cmd-P to
168 To advertise the existence of LPR printing service on port 515 on this
169 machine, such that it will be discovered by the Mac OS X printing software
170 and other DNS-SD compatible printing clients, use:
172 .Dl Nm Fl R Ns \ \&"My Test\&" _printer._tcp. \&. 515 pdl=application/postscript
174 For this registration to be useful, you need to actually have LPR service
175 available on port 515. Advertising a service that does not exist is not
176 very useful, and will be confusing and annoying to other people on the
179 Similarly, to advertise a web page being served by an HTTP
180 server on port 80 on this machine, such that it will show up in the
181 Bonjour list in Safari and other DNS-SD compatible Web clients, use:
183 .Dl Nm Fl R Ns \ \&"My Test\&" _http._tcp \&. 80 path=/path-to-page.html
185 To find the advertised web pages on the local network (the same list that
188 .Dl Nm Fl B Ns \ _http._tcp
190 While that command is running, in another window, try the
192 example given above to advertise a web page, and you should see the
193 "Add" event reported to the
195 window. Now press Ctrl-C in the
197 window and you should see the "Remove" event reported to the
202 .Pa /usr/bin/dns-sd \" Pathname
210 bugs are tracked in Apple Radar component "mDNSResponder".
215 command first appeared in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).