Flushing dns caching in linux

Posted on by

Problem

You want to update your dns resolution locally after some change in DNS.

You want to do this because your local dns cache still holds the old information about the domain. For example using your local dns and the google one returns two different results

host changed_domain.com
returns the old ip

host changed_domain.com 8.8.8.8
returns the new ip.

Solution

Check your systemd-resolved is active:

sudo systemctl is-active systemd-resolved
active

Get some statistics:

sudo systemd-resolve --statistics

Transactions
Current Transactions: 0
  Total Transactions: 38818

Cache
  Current Cache Size: 73
          Cache Hits: 21120
        Cache Misses: 19745

DNSSEC Verdicts
              Secure: 0
            Insecure: 0
               Bogus: 0
       Indeterminate: 0

Flush the cache (make the Current Cache Size above 0)

sudo systemd-resolve --flush-caches

Check the cache again (should be 0 now):

sudo systemd-resolve --statistics

ransactions
Current Transactions: 0
  Total Transactions: 38818

Cache
  Current Cache Size: 0
          Cache Hits: 21120
        Cache Misses: 19745

DNSSEC Verdicts
              Secure: 0
            Insecure: 0
               Bogus: 0
       Indeterminate: 0

Information taken from https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-flush-the-dns-cache-on-linux/