The disgusting and useless nslookup

[Brad Knowles]

At 9:09 AM -0400 5/29/01, Bob Vance wrote:

>  As an admin, I avoid ISC 'nslookup' thusly:

	The description you gave is fine, and so long as you are aware of 
the limitations of both the vendor-provided and the ISC versions of 
nslookup, you're probably safe.

	However, I have to ask -- how many admins around the world do you 
expect will actually follow the same kind process, and how many users 
of nslookup around the world do you expect will understand these 
kinds of differences?


	I submit that you're still better off simply avoiding any use 
whatsoever of nslookup in the first place, because your likelihood of 
getting bitten as a result of doing so is far, far lower.

	Yes, you may find systems that don't have dig installed, and on 
those you can fall back to nslookup (making sure you know whose 
version of nslookup it is, and what the relative merits and demerits 
are).

	But you're better off to start using as a regular course a much 
more generally dependable tool, such as dig.


	Now, if we could just get the ISC (and Nominum) to quit changing 
how one uses the damn command-line parameters for dig, we'd be just 
fine.  ;-)

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

/*        efdtt.c  Author:  Charles M. Hannum <root at ihack.net>          */
/*       Represented as 1045 digit prime number by Phil Carmody         */
/*     Prime as DNS cname chain by Roy Arends and Walter Belgers        */
/*                                                                      */
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/*   where title-key = "153 2 8 105 225" or other similar 5-byte key    */

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