nslookup flaws

[Barry Margolin]

In article <9i37fk$rjn at pub3.rc.vix.com>,
Nathan Jones  <nathanj at kmail.com.au> wrote:
>I believe there are problems with nslookup, but I'm having trouble
>finding out specifically what they are.

Off the top of my head:

1. Its error messages are imprecise.  In particular, you get "Nonexistent
   host/domain" when either the name doesn't exist (dig reports "status:
   NXDOMAIN") or when the name exists but doesn't have any records of the
   requested type (dig reports "status: NOERROR" and "ANSWER: 0").

2. When it displays results, you can't tell what section they're in.  So
   it looks like you asked for an A record and for some reason the server
   responded with an SOA record instead (this is actually the SOA record
   that gets put into the Authority section of a negative response, in
   order to provide a negative cache TTL).

3. It automatically implements the search list by default.  Debugging
   utilities should do just what you ask, not apply lots of automatic
   extras.

4. Its stupid requirement that the server be able to reverse-resolve its
   own address.  If a server is non-recursive and not hosting its own
   reverse domain, it won't be able to do this, and nslookup will think
   that it's a broken server and skip over it.

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