dnsextd messages in console I'm running OS X 10.10.1 and keep getting thousands of lines like the following in the system console log.

12/16/14 2:57:02.937 PM dnsextd[9384]: ConnectToServer - 10 failed attempts.  Aborting.
12/16/14 2:57:02.937 PM dnsextd[9384]: UpdateSRV: ConnectToServer failed
12/16/14 2:57:02.937 PM dnsextd[9384]: main: SetUpdateSRV - Socket is not connected
12/16/14 2:57:02.938 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.dnsextd[9384]) **Service exited with abnormal code: 1**
12/16/14 2:57:02.945 PM dnsextd[9447]: dnsextd starting
12/16/14 2:57:02.945 PM dnsextd[9447]: main: setrlimit - Invalid argument
12/16/14 2:57:02.945 PM dnsextd[9447]: Using default file descriptor resource limit
12/16/14 2:57:02.945 PM dnsextd[9447]: started_via_launchd
12/16/14 2:57:02.946 PM dnsextd[9447]: ConnectToServer: connect - Socket is not connected
12/16/14 2:57:02.946 PM dnsextd[9447]: ConnectToServer - retrying connection
12/16/14 2:57:03.809 PM dnsextd[9447]: ConnectToServer: connect - Socket is not connected
12/16/14 2:57:03.809 PM dnsextd[9447]: ConnectToServer - retrying connection
12/16/14 2:57:05.447 PM dnsextd[9447]: ConnectToServer: connect - Socket is not connected
12/16/14 2:57:05.448 PM dnsextd[9447]: ConnectToServer - retrying connection


It seems dnsextd is always exiting with error code 1. Has anybody had the same issue? Any ideas on how to fix this?
I've tried rebooting, stopping/starting dnsextd from launchctl, but had no luck.
As the man page says "dnsextd is a daemon invoked at boot time, running alongside BIND 9, to implement two EDNS0 extensions to the standard DNS protocol."

My guess is that you are getting these errors because dnsextd is running on your Mac and trying to talk to BIND, but BIND is not running. You can check this by running the following command. If it comes back blank, then BIND is not running.

pgrep named


I think the solution to this problem is to just turn dnsextd off using the below command. Unless you are running this Mac as a DNS server for other devices then I'm not sure why you'd need either running.

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dnsextd.plist