On-line nslookup?

[Bill Larson]

On Nov 25, 2006, at 8:41 PM, Greg Raven wrote:

> The 4th edition "DNS and BIND" recommends using nslookup to get
> information. However, my operating system -- Mac OS X -- does not  
> offer
> nslookup, although it does have dig, host, whois, and probably some
> others. Is there an on-line nslookup utility? Is there a way to
> duplicate with dig or ??? what Albitz and Lui do with nslookup?

As Doug has already said, dig can do anything that nslookup can  
provide.  In fact, in my opinion, dig is a much better tool than  
nslookup.

I am also working with MacOS X.  My system has nslookup as part of  
the system, located in /usr/bin.  I am running MacOS X 10.4.8 and I  
suspect that you must be running something older.  You are aware of  
the MacOS X "Network Utility"?  This provides all a GUI wrapper to  
nslookup and dig.

Finally, there is nothing that is preventing you from compiling and  
installing BIND on MacOS X.  This will provide you with nslookup if  
you really feel that it is necessary.  There is also a MacOS X BIND  
installation package available to provide a version of BIND 9.2.1  
under MacOS X.  This can provide you with a copy of nslookup without  
having to perform any compilation.  Take a look for SecureDNS in  
VersionTracker for a download link.

I would still recommend that you become very familiar with dig and  
use it instead of nslookup.

Bill Larson