In this article

These commands can be useful during troubleshooting issues, scripting, or getting help from our Support team.  

✍️ macOS agents deployed via an MDM tool should be managed through the tool, e.g. start/stop service directives should follow the MDM's guidance. 

If you're here looking for troubleshooting tools, start with the macOS Roaming Client issue diagnostics article to run the Diagnostic Tool. 

Stop Start service

These advanced commands are useful if the agent needs quickly stopped/started instead of rebooting the device. Only use these commands on manually deployed agents: if the agent was deployed via MDM use that tool to stop or start the Roaming Client.

Manually stop Roaming Client

• sudo launchctl bootout system /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.dnsfilter.agent.macos.helper.plist

• sudo launchctl bootout system /Library/LaunchDaemons/io.netalerts.agent.macos.helper.plist

Manually start the Roaming Client

• sudo launchctl bootstrap system /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.dnsfilter.agent.macos.helper.plist

• sudo launchctl bootstrap system /Library/LaunchDaemons/io.netalerts.agent.macos.helper.plist

Manually stop Roaming Client and disable for automatic startup

• sudo launchctl bootout system /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.dnsfilter.agent.macos.helper.plist || true
  sudo launchctl bootstrap system /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.dnsfilter.agent.macos.helper.plist

• sudo launchctl bootout system /Library/LaunchDaemons/io.netalerts.agent.macos.helper.plist || true
  sudo launchctl bootstrap system /Library/LaunchDaemons/io.netalerts.agent.macos.helper.plist

Port Binding

Determines what other applications might be listening or bound to port 53—the port the agent needs to bind to for filtering. 

sudo lsof -nP -iTCP:53 -sTCP:LISTEN
sudo lsof -nP -iUDP:53