about the dig

[Fajar A. Nugraha]

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Feng He <shorttag at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> When I deleted all the entries in /etc/resolv.conf (I am using Linux),
> dig can't work.
> I was thinking since dig is a standard resolver,

what makes you think that? From the man page

       dig (domain information groper) is a flexible tool for
interrogating DNS name servers. It performs DNS lookups and displays
the answers that are returned from the name server(s) that were
queried.

> it should have the
> capibility to follow the referrel from root, thus it will work fine
> even there is no system dns resolving.

A resolver software capable of recursive operation should work fine.
dig's not it.

> Am I right?

Also from the man page:

       Unless it is told to query a specific name server, dig will try
each of the servers listed in /etc/resolv.conf.

So something like "dig google.com @8.8.8.8" would work even without
any entries on /etc/resolv.conf, but if you don't tell it to use a
specific name server it won't work.

-- 
Fajar