how to trace DNS queries

[Simon Waters]

"Chris..." wrote:
> 
> Hi there,
> 
> I am just curious if it is possible to trace the hierarchy of DNS
> calls to resolve a hostname.  For example, if I use nslookup to get
> the IP address of www.vim.org, I'm not only interested in the IP
> address, but also about all the nameservers that were involved and
> which one finally gave me the result (maybe I can also see if the
> result was from its DNS database of from its cache).

dig has some clever options for most of this.

If you want to force a recursion from the root servers "dig
+trace" is handy.

I use "tcpdump" for watching named's own behaviour and "doc" to
check out the delegation of specific zones quickly.

DJB DNS has a tool that lists all nameservers that might(!) be
involved in the resolution of a particular name, the output of
which is more frightening for the security implications about
the state of the DNS it reveals, than useful for troubleshooting
IME.