in defense of nslookup

Kevin Darcy kcd at daimlerchrysler.com
Tue Aug 6 23:38:34 UTC 2002


Bill Manning wrote:

> a properly configured delegation and a properly configured environment will
> give you the same information via nslookup and dig.

If it were all properly configured, it would probably Just Work and you wouldn't
need to use nslookup *or* 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.

I don't agree with your implication that nslookup is closer to "the point of view
of a client resolver". It does all sorts of crap that a call to gethostbyname()
does not, e.g. trying to reverse-resolve the nameserver's address, generating
confusing output, misreporting errors, etc. Like dig, nslookup is clearly a
DNS troubleshooting tool. It's just an inferior one in practically every way. If
you want something more minimalistic than dig, use host. At least it is
*cleanly* and *straightforwardly* minimalistic.

The only reason I use nslookup semi-regularly is because I haven't got around to
installing dig on all of my boxes.


- Kevin





More information about the bind-users mailing list