What app is using mdnsd if I don't have Firefox and draining my battery on samsung galaxy s3

[AC Question]

For the past several weeks my Samsung Galaxy SIII battery has been draining almost completely 3x/day. In Settings I checked the Battery usage and find it's Mdnsd that's using all the battery. An online search tells me it's associated with Mozilla Firefox which I don't have. It is also associated with drone app use, again which I don't have. I'm also having trouble using Google Maps in that it tells me it cannot search right now and when it does work, it won't give me directions even though I have the voice directions checked. I've uninstalled/reinstalled GoogleMaps a couple of times and it will work for a while and then quits again. So I have two problems. Any insights? I'm using Tracfone's Total Choice which only supports 4.1.2 os so I cannot do any updating.

 

[nalsawadi]

Goodness, finally a thread discussing this problem without mentioning firefox. I've had this problem appear a couple of weeks ago on my Galaxy Note 2. I do not have firefox, nor do I have any drone apps, and my GPS is always turned off, yet MDNSD is eating up my battery even more than the screen is !

I factory reset my phone and after 8 days MDNSD is back ! I'm starting to suspect this is chrome related? Because I usually use the main android browser, but as soon as I used google chrome (today) the MDNSD appeared back.

 

[BlueDragon123]

Henry, have you had any luck with your further research? I have been having this same issue for a few weeks now. I read in another forum that the Mdsnd issue could be related to security software. I had downloaded CleanMaster and then uninstalled it a few days later, that is when the Mdsnd issue appeared. I can get it to stop temporarily by shutting off my phone at night while charging it but as soon as I turn on my location to use Google Maps, it comes right back. It has also reappeared when I did not turn on locations. I am getting quite frustrated. I was also told hackers can use it for identity theft but I have not read anything about that online. I appreciate the depth and time you are putting into figuring this out. I am not a techy and don't have adequate working knowledge of cell phones to get this solved without assistance.

 

[Feli Hadiyono]

In my case, i found that the facebook app (version 100++) was the problem. Downgrade to version 90s and restart the phone then the mdnsd gone

 

[BlueDragon123]

How do I get a downgraded version?

 

[Feli Hadiyono]

How do I get a downgraded version?

First, uninstall the fb version 100++. Find your friends who use the version 90++ fb app then transfer the app use ShareIt

 

[henryw48]

Hello BlueDragon. I have not made any progress in finding out what changed and is causing my problem. I don't think it is Facebook. I had taken Facebook off my phone when I had started using it on my tablet many, many months ago.

As I had said in a previous reply, it COULD be (A GUESS) that the updates to some apps have started using more and more CPU processing power, making it so mdnsd or some downstream process cannot keep up with bursts of traffic coming into the phone, thus causing the dropped packets. It would also mean that my old phone is obsolete.

One thing I've noticed with this problem is that everyone appears to have started having the problem a few weeks ago. In my looking at several possible apps, I noticed that there had been a flurry of app updates that came out in the last week of Nov and beginning of Dec. I suspect that that was in preparation for going on vacation or the rush of holiday phone/tablet purchases. I had tried uninstalling several of these, but to no avail.

Right now, I just downloaded an app to display the log, in hopes that there may be a clue there. However, I'm not hopeful. I now need to learn to understand the log contents.

In the future, I might develop a monitoring program to try to report when it sees this activity, so I have a better chance of pinpointing the approximate time when an event occurs. It will make it easier to find things in the log or in a network traffic capture.

Any assistance with more information or finding this problem would be appreciated. This includes the success and/or failure of any attempts.

 

[Huku]

Hey guys,
I've been watching this thread regularly for a while, but just yesterday I made an account so I can post and be part of solving the mdnsd issue.
My observations are that after an update (I updated about 20 apps at 24.12) any of the apps that I updated makes mdnsd go into endless loop.
So I started to uninstall different apps that are most suspicious. So far I don't have success.
However I think that it would be very helpful if we try to find what are the apps that are common for all of us.
For example - does any of you have the Ping&DNS app installed?
Another observation I made is that when I kill mdnsd, Viber stops loading media - so currently I am without viber to check if this can be the problem. So far for the last 20 hours I don't experience the mdnsd high cpu problem.
Unfortunately meanwhile Ping&DNS app updated itself (I had the autoupdate turned on for a while :-( ) and now there could be two reasons. However I want to wait for at least one more day before I confirm that mdnsd problem is solved.
Meanwhile can you please check if you have this Ping&DNS app installed.
Thanks!

 

[Huku]

Well... the mdnsd problem is back again :-( It started heating the CPU during a skype call.
So, it's not Viber.
But it's not also skype, because I already removed it a few days ago and the problem still was there.

 

[henryw48]

Hi Huku. Thanks for your suggestion and status update! Yes, I also have Ping & DNS. I also noticed that it was just updated again yesterday to version 2.9.3.

Instead of waiting for the high CPU problem to show up, I've been looking "under the hood" so to speak by using Terminal Emulator or using a language like Python to get at the underlying Linux commands. I'm NOT rooted, so that limits what I can do somewhat, but there's a lot of information anyway. As I've posted, I've been watching the creation of UDP and UDP6 sockets using port 5353 (multicast DNS port) either with netstat command or "cat /proc/net/udp6" and "cat /proc/net/udp". I know there's still a problem when I see more than a few and they have a non-zero RECV-Q.

 

[Huku]

It is not very likely that Ping&DNS app causes the problem but I just removed it to test.
Yeap, I saw your method but for me it's easier just to use top -m 5 and check the top 5 apps that are using the cpu.
Does anyone else use Ping&DNS app ?

 

[henryw48]

Wasn't sure which of the Unix/Linux commands was on the Android. Top is a good way of seeing he problem once it starts looping. However, I detect the problem often hours before it starts looping and by restarting when enough sockets are open, I avoid going into the loop and losing battery time. But yours is a good way of detecting the loop.

 

[Huku]

Nice, I understand - going to try this. How many connections are indication for the problem? I wonder if there could be a script that checks from time to time and gives notification when the number is high. Probably Tasker could do that but not sure how.
Thanks.

 

[57kevin]

One thing seems to be certain, it is definitely a Samsung issue reading through this thread. Those of you that are able to, try flashing CM or or some other AOSP ROM and see if the issue goes away.

Issue not just samsung. I am using sony z3v and am having the same issue. I can usually use avast mobile security to clear my ram and stop apps and it had gone away for a bit in the past but always returns.

 

[henryw48]

@Huku: On my phone, when I add up the number of sockets that are UDP plus the number that are UDP6, the mdnsd process starts looping when the resultant number is around 550. I'm in the process of writing a python script to display the total and the time that it was first detected. I could have written a sh script to do that, but I chose python as I'm trying to learn that language.

@alexdiazaldas73: You say you have a rooted phone with the problem. I have looked at displaying the system log. However, it appears that I can only display log entries for the process associated with the app that I'm using (Terminal Emulator == androidterm). To get more information I would need to root my phone.

If you are still reading this thread, or if someone else has a rooted phone with this problem, I am hoping the log entries associated with the mdnsd process may have interesting information hopefully showing why it may be failing. All the hundreds of UDP and UDP6 sockets on port 5353 are associated with the mdnsd process.

Go to a sh prompt. Run:

ps | grep mdnsd

The output on my phone is

mdnsr 4645 1 1588 1004 ffffffff 00000000 S /system/bin/mdnsd

The first number (4645 in this case) is the process ID of the running mdnsd process.

Now, become root and run:

logcat -v *:I | grep <process id from above>

After a period of time, do a CTRL-C to break out.

Let me know if you see anything worthwhile.

 

[baronv]

I'm on a Nexus 5 (2013) and this issue started happening to both my wife and I today. I know our phones updated some apps last night which is probably the root of this issue.

Is there a way to sort in Google Play to see which apps were recently updated from the past 3 days? Right now when I checked there's no way to sort it and the "Recently updated apps" section only shows the Twitter app that auto-updated just a few minutes ago.

Only noticed this issue when I received an email from my wife where her battery drained down to 40% after just 2 hours in stand by and when I checked my own phone it went down from 100% to 40% as well in an hour.

 

[henryw48]

On both my Samsung devices, after Google Play updates apps, it puts them in a Recently updated section in the Google Play => Apps & games => My apps & games page for about a week.

If an app doesn't appear there, could you be using apps not in Google Play that get updated differently?

The other possibility is that there is something happening on the network that both you and your wife get on that is causing the problem. Once mdnsd enters the loop and starts using the CPU and draining the battery, it doesn't stop until you restart the device.

 

[baronv]

I've rebooted my phone already and charging it, and after uninstalling Twitter going to see if the drain happens. My wife's battery drain happend to her while she was at work and mine occurred during my drive into my job, our network is Tmobile. I use Amazon apps too but haven't had to update an app on it in weeks, and my wife doesn't have Amazon Apps installed on her phone. So far it's either a shared common app or the TMO network I'm guessing.

Weird thing is her battery drain shows the MDNSD as a culprint while my system info did not show it at all and all the running apps appeared normal with only screen activity showing the highest use of the battery.

 

[Catzclub]

I think I figured it out for my phone at least. I think mdnsd is linked to micro SD cards. It has something to do with the memory on them, I transferred all my SD card data to my laptop and then proceeded to reset the sd card and put it back in my phone. Throughout the time I did that I let my phone go from 100 to 0 and used it the whole time, mdnsd never appears. I then put the SD card back in and bam, while it was charging I see mdnsd pop right back up again. I have an LG G3, with Verizon. So hopefully this helps someone.

 

[Huku]

@henryw48 : my phone (Galaxy S5) is rooted and I have terminal, so it's not a problem to run the commands you wrote above. But I guess that would make sense only when the problem appears, right?
@baronv: I had the same problem and the best way I found to check the date when the apps are updated is with ES File Explorer - inside it there is menu "App" where you can see all your apps and the update (modified) dates.

And one more thing - as I said earlier I have uninstalled Ping&DNS on 03.01.2017 and luckily the problem didn't appear since then.

I wonder if SD card has really something to do with this problem as suggested by Catzclub...

 

[henryw48]

Thanks to all those who submitted suggestions and what they did to try to fix problem. I can see that it affects devices on multiple carriers. I am on Verizon and am using wifi connected to Comcast (Xfinity), so the problem diesn't appear to be carrier specific. It can still be caused by the traffic geting to the phone over different services.

I also have a Samsung tablet. I checked and found that although it still had the /system/bin/mdnsd program, it wasn't even running. So there might be a set of programs that need it. Unfortunately, I don't know what those programs are or what in the configuration starts it.
The reply about the possibly being related to the SD card is interesting. I have several apps with data and / or executables on my SD card. Typicallty SD cards are slower and so it MAY be causing the device to run more slowly causing the backup on the recv-queue.

@Huku: Thanks for offering. Yes you would need to see it happening. However, if the number of sockets on UDP port 5353 is increasing, that's the period from which we might see something in the log. You don't have to see the mdnsd looping to capture good data. More importantly, the messages needed may be right before the mdnsd process goes into the loop. The logcat program can be set up to run and log the results in a file continuously.