man pdns_control (8): Control the pDNS nameserver

SYNOPSIS

pdns_control [options] command

pdns_control is used to send commands to a running pDNS nameserver.

A summary of options is included below.

--help: Show summary of options.
--chroot=...: Where PowerDNS is chrooted
--config-dir=...: Location of configuration directory (pdns.conf)
--config-name=...: Name of this virtual configuration - will rename the binary image
--remote-address=...: Remote address to query
--remote-port=...: Remote port to query
--secret=...: Secret needed to connect to remote PowerDNS
--socket-dir=...: Where the controlsocket will live

ccounts: Show the content of the cache
notify <domain>: Adds a domain to the notification list, causing PDNS to send out notifications to the nameservers of a domain. Can be used if a slave missed previous notifications or is generally hard of hearing.
notify-host <domain> <host>: Same as above but with operator specified IP address as destination, to be used if you know better than PowerDNS.
cycle: Restart the nameserver so it reloads its configuration.
ping: Check if the server is alive.
purge [<record>]: Purge entries from the packet cache. If the record name ends with a dollar ($) all entries that end with that name are removed. If no record is specified the entire cache is purged.
rediscover: Instructs backends that new domains may have appeared in the database, or, in the case of the Bind backend, in named.conf.
retrieve <domain>: Retrieve a slave domain from its master. Done nearly immediatly.
set <variable> <value>: Set the configuration parameter <variable> to <value>. Currently only the query-logging can be set.
show <variable>: Show a single statistic, as present in the output of the list command.
quit: Tell a running pdns_server to quit.
status: Show usage statistics.
uptime: Show the uptime of the running server.
version: Print the version of the running pdns daemon.