Oddness with a query

[Barry Margolin]

In article <9lhg24$g23 at pub3.rc.vix.com>,
Duncan Hill  <dhill at cricalix.net> wrote:
>
>On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Barry Margolin wrote:
>
>> In article <9lgqrg$ch2 at pub3.rc.vix.com>, What was the dig command
>> that you typed?  The ethereal output seems to indicate that the
>> proper response came back, so it's strange that dig reported a
>> timeout.
>
>dig www.pct.edu

ISTR that some versions of dig defaulted to type ANY rather than A if you
don't specify a record type.  I don't remember if 8.2 was one of them or
not.  I suggest you make a habit of specifying the type explicitly,
e.g. "dig www.pct.edu a".

nslookup has always defaulted to type=A when looking up names, and type=PTR
when looking up an address.

>[17:45] cuendllr:avatar 3
>~> nslookup www.pct.edu
>Server:  ns4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net
>Address:  167.206.112.4
>
>Name:    mayer.pct.edu
>Address:  12.23.198.64
>Aliases:  www.pct.edu
>
>[17:46] cuendllr:avatar 4
>~> dig www.pct.edu
>
>; <<>> DiG 8.2 <<>> www.pct.edu
>;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
>;; res_nsend to server default -- 167.206.112.4: Connection timed out
>[17:47] cuendllr:avatar 5

Do yo have multiple nameservers in your /etc/resolv.conf?  I think dig and
nslookup also differ in the order in which they try them when timeouts
occur.  nslookup's order doesn't match the order that the real resolver
uses, while I think dig does (if you have servers A, B, and C, the resolver
tries them in the order ABCABCABC, whereas nslookup does AAABBBCCC).

Try also turning on the verbose option in both commands, to see all the
queries and timeouts.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
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