This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org:
---
Title       : 	Bind DNS Query Graph Charts with GNUPlot
Author      : 	Remy van Elst
Date        : 	13-08-2013
URL         : 	https://raymii.org/s/software/Bind-GNUPlot-DNS-Bar-Graph.html
Format      : 	Markdown/HTML
---



![bind][1]

This is a very simple script which uses GNUplot to create graphs of Bind Query
logs.

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### Bind logging

Enable query logging in Bind:

    
    
    # /etc/bind/named.conf.options
         logging{
           channel system_log {
             file "/var/log/named/sys.log" versions unlimited size 2g;
             severity warning;
             print-time yes;
             print-severity yes;
             print-category yes;
           };
           channel queries_log {
             file "/var/log/named/queries.log" versions unlimited size 2g;
             severity info;
             print-time no;
           };
           category default{
             system_log;
           };
           category queries{
             queries_log;
           };
         };
    

Don't forget to create the `/var/log/named` folder:

    
    
    mkdir /var/log/named
    chown bind:bind /var/log/named
    

Why `/var/log/named`? Because AppArmor on Ubuntu allows bind to write to this
path, and I don't like messing with either AppArmor or SELinux.

### Bind log parsing

Use the following command line to get the 20 most queries domains

    
    
    awk '{ print $4 }' /var/log/named/queries.log | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail -n 20 > dns-data
    

Example data:

    
    
    83094 metrics-api.librato.com
    83689 collector-2.newrelic.com
    84165 puppetmaster.int
    82445 ntp0.nl.net
    

The use the gnuplot script to create the graph:

    
    
    gnuplot < plot.gplt
    

And there you go. This is the GNUPlot script if you don't want to check out the
repo.

    
    
    set term png truecolor size 800,600
    set output "data.png"
    set xlabel "Domains"
    set ylabel "Queries"
    set title "DNS Usage"
    set grid
    set xtics rotate by -45 axis out offset 0,1.5
    set boxwidth 1 relative
    set style fill transparent solid 0.5 border rgb"black"
    plot "dns-data" u 1:xtic(2) w boxes lc rgb"blue"
    

Because GNUplot has no easy support for horizotal bar graphs, if you want it
horizontal, rotate it with Imagemagick:

    
    
    convert data.png -rotate 90 data-90.png
    

You now have a nice image overview of DNS queries.

### Links

  * [Raymii.org][3]
  * [Github][4]

### License

    
    
    Copyright (C) 2013 Remy van Elst
    
    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.
    
    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.
    
    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
    

   [1]: https://raymii.org/s/inc/img/dns-report.png
   [2]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212
   [3]: https://raymii.org/s/software/Bind-GNUPlot-DNS-Bar-Graph.html
   [4]: https://github.com/RaymiiOrg/bind-gnuplot-reports

---

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