The disgusting and useless nslookup

[Bob Vance]

I didn't say that I used it to troubleshoot DNS problems -- only
resolver issues, in which case it is perfect and 'dig' is useless.


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Tks        | <mailto:BVance at sbm.com>
BV         | <mailto:BobVance at alumni.caltech.edu>
Sr. Technical Consultant,  SBM, A Gates/Arrow Co.
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-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Reid [mailto:jim at rfc1035.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2001 3:25 PM
To: bobvance at alumni.caltech.edu
Cc: bind-users at isc.org
Subject: Re: The disgusting and useless nslookup


>>>>> "Bob" == Bob Vance <bobvance at alumni.caltech.edu> writes:

    Bob> That's the main reason that I use it -- in fact I always use
    Bob> the vendor's copy so that things like nsswitch are accounted
    Bob> for.  The other reason that I use it is laziness -- I'd
    Bob> rather type ping bobv than ping bobv.dyn.atl.sbm.com

This is one of the major reasons for *not* using nslookup. If nslookup
is returning answers from other lookup mechanisms on the computer, how
can you expect it to troubleshoot DNS problems? How can you tell which
lookup facility the answer came from? What if that answer differs from
what's in the DNS (which wasn't queried because nsswitch and friends
say "look at /etc/hosts or NIS before going to the DNS")?