in defense of nslookup

[Pete Ehlke]

On Tue, Aug 06, 2002 at 08:48:06AM -0700, Bill Manning wrote:
> 
> 
> a properly configured delegation and a properly configured environment will
> give you the same information via nslookup and dig.
> 
> from the point of view of a client resolver, nslookup is useful in the
> toolkit since clients are the ones who complain when things break.
> 
Hear hear.

dig is a great tool for looking at dns data, but somewhat less than
spectacular at looking at how resolution is happening on a particular
host. 

nslookup has some oddities, especially the in-addr.arpa lookup thing,
but it's an excellent tool for examining resolution. 

The key is understanding when to use which tool. Most of the carping
about nslookup here comes as a reaction to folks not understanding that
it's not the be-all and end-all of the dns toolkit. Lots of people use
ping as a dns tool, too, but we don't tell them that ping sucks and they
should never use it. We tell them how to use tools that are more
appropriate to the task. And there are times when nslookup is the
appropriate tool.

-Pete