The disgusting and useless nslookup

[Bob Vance]

>I want to know if a short hostname is being resolved properly,

That's the main reason that I use it -- in fact I always use the
vendor's copy so that things like nsswitch are accounted for.
The other reason that I use it is laziness -- I'd rather type
   ping bobv
than
   ping bobv.dyn.atl.sbm.com

:)

-------------------------------------------------
Tks        | <mailto:BVance at sbm.com>
BV         | <mailto:BobVance at alumni.caltech.edu>
Sr. Technical Consultant,  SBM, A Gates/Arrow Co.
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-----Original Message-----
From: bind-users-bounce at isc.org [mailto:bind-users-bounce at isc.org]On
Behalf Of Christopher L. Barnard
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2001 2:46 PM
To: bind-users at isc.org
Subject: Re: The disgusting and useless nslookup



There is unfortunately another big reason that it is still there.  We
all know
not to use it.  But the rest of the world that want to do a quick "dns
lookup"
will use nslookup.  Telling these people to use "getent hosts" or "host"
or
"dig" is like speaking to a blank wall.

Speaking of nslookup, I have to admit that I still occasionally use it.
The
reason I use it is for one purpose:  I want to know if a short hostname
is
being resolved properly, and I want to know what nameserver it is using
if it
needs one (basically, the first "nameserver" line in the
/etc/resolv.conf).
I'm curious to know how other people accomplish this (this is for a Sun
machine running Solaris 2.large, if it matters)

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| Christopher L. Barnard         O     When I was a boy I was told that
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> >>>>> "Brad" == Brad Knowles <brad.knowles at skynet.be> writes:
>
>     Brad> 	I have to assume that it is for reasons like this that
>     Brad> "nslookup" is completely gone from more recent versions of
>     Brad> BIND.  Good riddance!
>
> It is still there alas. IIRC the BIND9 developers did discuss dropping
> nslookup for BIND9 but were obliged to provide it, possibly for
> contractual reasons. There are a lot of legacy scripts in use that
> depend on this dismal tool unfortunately. So nslookup lives on. At
> least the BIND9 version of nslookup prints a nice little message
> telling you to use a decent lookup tool instead:
>
>     % nslookup
>     Note:  nslookup is deprecated and may be removed from future
releases.
>     Consider using the `dig' or `host' programs instead.  Run nslookup
with
>     the `-sil[ent]' option to prevent this message from appearing.
>
> nslookup is like something from a Dracula horror film. It's not alive,
> but it's not dead either. But it keeps coming back to haunt you. And
> everyone's bored with it and wishes it went away forever. :-)