What triggers these events: kern.info dnsmasq[1]: read /etc/hosts - 12 names

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Quite a few times per hr I see the following messages in the syslog file. There does not seem to be a fixed time interval in between them.

  1. What causes these events
  2. How do I silence these messages in syslog?

I have Wan connection using dhcp and ISP uses 10 min lease time, so lots of IP renew request but not in sync with the following messages

Mon Feb 17 14:04:44 2025 kern.info dnsmasq[1]: read /etc/hosts - 12 names
Mon Feb 17 14:04:44 2025 kern.info dnsmasq[1]: read /tmp/hosts/dhcp.cfg01411c - 71 names
Mon Feb 17 14:04:44 2025 kern.info dnsmasq[1]: read /tmp/hosts/odhcpd - 44 names
Mon Feb 17 14:04:44 2025 kern.info dnsmasq-dhcp[1]: read /etc/ethers - 0 addresses
Mon Feb 17 14:05:02 2025 kern.info dnsmasq[1]: read /etc/hosts - 12 names
Mon Feb 17 14:05:02 2025 kern.info dnsmasq[1]: read /tmp/hosts/dhcp.cfg01411c - 71 names
Mon Feb 17 14:05:02 2025 kern.info dnsmasq[1]: read /tmp/hosts/odhcpd - 48 names
Mon Feb 17 14:05:02 2025 kern.info dnsmasq-dhcp[1]: read /etc/ethers - 0 addresses
2

Usually it’s from the odhcpd IPv6 daemon serving LAN DHCPv6 to clients. When a new LAN client comes online, and gets a DHCPv6 lease, it updates dnsmasq. See how the odhcpd entries increased from 44 to 48?

1 Like
3

Use the following settings:

config odhcpd 'odhcpd'                                         
        option maindhcp '0'                                    
        option leasefile '/tmp/hosts/odhcpd'                   
        option leasetrigger '/usr/sbin/odhcpd-update'          
        option loglevel '3'

level 3 : err, should the info messages not be there?

4

odhcpd isn’t the program logging the messages. It’s dnsmasq. odhcpd is triggering the update.

5

Have
option quietdhcp '1'
and no other loggin options in the dhcp file under config dnsmasq, is there an other option needed to suppress these log messages?

6

You can delete the leasetrigger option from odhcpd to prevent odhcpd trying to add DNS entries for IPv6 leases to dnsmasq. Otherwise, no, the log messages themselves aren't configurable.

7

Many thanks for answering my questions. Much appreciated. Would it be worth to open a change request for adding a log level for dnsmasq deamon ?

8

You would need to submit it to the dnsmasq project, not OpenWrt. If it were me, I wouldn’t waste my time. But if you do not ask, the answer is certainly “no.”

9

Hello Dave
Looking at the dnsmasq code , all log messages are send via vsyslog function following the syslog level convention, reading files like hosts file are logged with LOG_INFO. Am I right that these messages end up at the openwrt logd service? If that is the case , we're stuck logd does not seem to be supporting filtering log levels.