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NAMED-WIREFORMAT(1) BIND 9 NAMED-WIREFORMAT(1)

NAME

named-wireformat - parse DNS wire format messages

SYNOPSIS

named-wireformat [-b] [-d] [-h] [-m flag] [-p] [-r] [-s] [-t] [{filename}]

DESCRIPTION

named-wireformat reads a DNS message in wire format, either in hexidecimal form or as raw data, from a file or from standard input, and translates it to text format to check whether it is formatted correctly.

OPTIONS

Use best-effort parsing. Errors in message content will be ignored, so long as the message itself can still be parsed as valid DNS wire data.

Read input as raw binary data instead of hexidecimal text.

Print out the help menu.

Turn on memory debugging flags. Possible flags are usage, trace and record.

Preserve the order of records in the message, instead of sorting by name and type.

After parsing and displaying the input message, render it back to wire format, parse that, and display it again. This is used to confirm that parsing and rendering are idempotent.

Print memory statistics on shutdown.

Parse the input as a TCP DNS message, with a two-byte length header.

ARGUMENTS

If specified, the message to be parsed is read from this file. Otherwise, it is read from the standard input.

SEE ALSO

named-rrchecker(8) <#std-iscman-named-rrchecker>, BIND 9 Administrator Reference Manual.

Author

Internet Systems Consortium

Copyright

2026, Internet Systems Consortium

2026-09-03 9.21.26