MQUERY(1)

📦
version 0.12 · 3 versions
, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute

💖 MQUERY(1) — the mquery girlies' manual 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to the mquery page, section 1 of the general commands manual. it's tiny, it's niche, it's giving "multicast DNS but make it a little gremlin". let's get into it 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

mquery — a small query tool for multicast DNS. that's it. that's the whole job. she's little and she queries. periodt 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

mquery [-hsv] [-i IFACE] [-t TYPE] [-w SEC] [NAME]

look at her. compact. iconic. no notes 🌸

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so mquery is the companion tool to mdnsd(8) — like, they're besties — but ngl she can also fly solo as a stand-alone with other mDNS servers. she formats and sends mDNS service queries, kind of the same way mdns-scan(1) does, except with a fraction of the usability 😭 like yes she does the thing, no she is not user-friendly about it, and we respect that honestly.

she runs on the system default interface, which gets derived from the routing table (iykyk). wanna run her somewhere else? hit her with the -i IFACE command line option and she'll relocate 💫

and then she just… keeps going. she runs continuously, monitoring for responses to that initial query — and by default that query is _services._dns-sd._udp.local. she's a listener. she's patient. she's lowkey just vibing there forever 👑

✨ OPTIONS ✨

this program follows the usual UNIX command line syntax. the options are as follows:

  • -h — prints a bare bones help message and exits. that's it, that's the help, she's not doing a whole TED talk 💀
  • -i IFACE — which interface to run the query on. by default the system default interface is used, derived from the routing table.
only available on Linux! soz to everyone else 🫶
  • -s — by default mquery behaves a lot like mdns-scan(1), which, after receiving an initial reply to a scan, sends a specific PTR query to whoever answered. this option skips that specific scan and runs mquery in a simple mode. she's off the clock, she's just chilling ✨
  • -t TYPE — query type. default is 12 (PTR). pick your fighter 🎀
  • -h — print a help message and exit. yes, again. she said it twice. she's thorough, she's committed, she contains multitudes 💅
  • -v — show program version. know your girl's era 🌈
  • -w SEC — delay (approximate) in seconds before automatically exiting. she sets a timer and dips. main character exit 🚪✨

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

mdns-scan(1) mdnsd(8),

go read the whole friend group 🫶

✨ AUTHORS ✨

this mDNS-SD implementation was created back in 2003 by Jeremie Miller <jer@jabber.org> — an actual pioneer, an OG, a legend fr fr 👑

much later, in 2016, it was adopted by Joachim Wiberg <troglobit@gmail.com> for further development and maintenance at GitHub: ⟨https://github.com/troglobit/mdnsd⟩. glow-up era, we love to see it 💖

and that's the page babes — this version came from Debian, dated Jan 4 2022, and it's filed under MQUERY(1) in the manual. now go query something, you absolute icon 🌟💅

📦 where this page comes from