Fw: nslookup - help.

[Bob Vance]

Yeah.
In my experience 'nslookup' by the vendor emulates their resolver code,
which
makes perfect sense to me.

Basically:
If the name, as entered, does not end in a dot (which signifies a FQDN),
then
the resolver code looks to "/etc/resolv.conf" for how to create a FQDN
from the
user input (partial) name.  If the name has fewer than a certain number
of dots
(usually configurable in "/etc/resolv.conf", as well), then it will
append, from
"/etc/resolv.conf", the "domain" name or *each* name of the "search"
list to the
input name and try that as a FQDN.  There are other attributes of the
algorithm,
as well, which can be found by a 'man 4 resolver' or something similar
(hopefully ' man -k resolv' will work on your system :).

So (as Jim likes to point out :), a large number of lookups can be
generated by
a mistyped name !!

The solution to your problem is simply to change the name of 'nslookup'
that is in /usr/local/bin (or wherever you installed it) to
'nslookup-bind'.
Then 'nslookup' still works for everyone as before and *you* know that
you can
use 'nslookup-bind', if you want to.  Of course, functionality for
support of
new record types or features is limited to what your vendor supports
(but, then,
you always have 'nslookup-bind' :) .


-------------------------------------------------
Tks        | <mailto:BVance at sbm.com>
BV         | <mailto:BobVance at alumni.caltech.edu>
Sr. Technical Consultant,  SBM, A Gates/Arrow Co.
Vox 770-623-3430           11455 Lakefield Dr.
Fax 770-623-3429           Duluth, GA 30097-1511
=================================================





-----Original Message-----
From: Ashley_E_Andrews at rush.edu [mailto:Ashley_E_Andrews at rush.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 1:58 PM
To: bobvance at alumni.caltech.edu
Subject: RE: Fw: nslookup - help.




I sent in the original post -- basically there are two versions of
nslookup on
the DNS server -- one works well, the other (that comes with Bind9) does
not
resolve unless the fqdn is entered.  Someone else wrote that nslookup in
Bind9
is sort 'brain dead' to encourage to use 'dig'.  That is an answer I can
live
with and sort of makes sense, just have to teach more folks about dig.


|--------+----------------------------->
|        |          "Bob Vance"        |
|        |          <bobvance at alumni.ca|
|        |          ltech.edu>         |
|        |                             |
|        |          03/06/2001 11:20 AM|
|        |          Please respond to  |
|        |          bobvance           |
|        |                             |
|--------+----------------------------->
  >--------------------------------------------------------|
  |                                                        |
  |       To:     bind-users at isc.org                       |
  |       cc:     (bcc: Ashley E Andrews/Rush/RSH)         |
  |       Subject:     RE: Fw: nslookup - help.            |
  >--------------------------------------------------------|






I missed the original post on this thread.
What, exactly, was the failing lookup?

Wasn't there just a discussion about BIND's 'nslookup' vs. vendor's
'nslookup'?
Could it be the same thing?
E.g., we know that HP has decided to make its 'nslookup' emulate pretty
much
exactly what a client program (using the HP libs) would get via
resolution;
viz., searching the "/etc/resolv.conf" domain list and supporting
"/etc/nsswitch.conf", as well.

   (Personally, I'm glad for that.
    Under HP-UX, I use *their* 'nslookup' so that I'm pretty sure
    what 'ping' or 'telnet' will see, while I also use 'dig' for
    other lookups.
   )

-------------------------------------------------
Tks