Resolver Question

[Kevin Darcy]

Let me count the ways...

1. It *aborts* if none of the nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf reverse-resolve.
Who cares about *that*? Plus, the reverse lookups are wasteful and garbage up
named's debugging output, or a packet trace, if you're trying to troubleshoot
a problem.

2. By default, it doesn't show you the header flags, exact RCODE, section
counts, and, under normal circumstances, the contents of the Authority and
Additional sections of the responses. (_Sometimes_ it'll show the contents of
the Authority section, but under some confusing subtitle like "Served by:",
which doesn't intuitively tell you that the data came from the Authority
section).

3. By default, it implements "search", which is quite confusing, especially
since sometimes it'll claim the *wrong* error code for what you asked it to
look up, e.g. you ask for for "foo.com", it doesn't find that, so it'll ask
about "foo.com.bar.com", and if it gets some other kind of error on that name,
e.g. a SERVFAIL, that's what it'll report, thus (mis)leading you to think that
"foo.com" returns SERVFAIL, even though it doesn't.

4. It doesn't tell you the sent/received packet sizes and the round-trip time
of the query.

etc. etc. Shall I go on?


- Kevin

devin at thecabal.org wrote:

> On 24 Aug 2000 18:03:19 -0700, Kevin Darcy <kcd at daimlerchrysler.com> wrote:
>
> > Get rid of the extraneous PTR and use a real lookup tool like "dig".
>
> What's the problem with nslookup?
>
> --
> Devin L. Ganger <dlganger at earthlink.net>
> "The only difference between those with tattoos and those without tattoos
> is that those with tattoos are much, much cooler and can kick your ass."
> * If replying, please either send an email OR post it here, not both. *