Why do they hide the version numbers?

[Bill Larson]

I can't answer your question directly.  The "dig", "tools", and
"nslookup" commands do NOT provide any version information.  Even
searching for this information directly in the executable is
unsuccessful (at least for me).

But, all of these tools look up information from a name server, and the
version of the server IS critical to troubleshooting problems.  When
people ask "what version are you running?", they are refering to the
version of the server, not your lookup tools.

Assuming that you are using a reasonably current version of "named",
you can determine the version with a "-v" option.  You can also read
the log file output from when named starts up.

Finally, you MAY be able to query the server for the "version.bind"
resource record of type "txt" and class "chaos".  If this information
has not been intentionally hidden, then this would provide the version
number for the currently running named.

This can be done with nslookup or dig.  Using dig, this information is
requested with:

	dig @$SERVER version.bind txt chaos

or with nslookup:

	nslookup -type=txt -class=chaos version.bind $SERVER

where you supply the name or IP address for "$SERVER".

Be aware that many named servers have been configured to NOT answer
these queries, but it may be possible.

The best way to determine the version on named is to use the "-v"
option, or read the logs.  But however you do this, the concern is the
version of named, not the version of nslookup/hosts/dig.

Bill Larson

> What is it about the bind tools that makes it so hard to find out
> which version of anything you are dealing with?  Do they intentionally
> want to hide it?  dig, nslookup, host and named all have no concept
> of a --version arguement of any type.