Microsoft's nslookup Implementation Problems

[Merton Campbell Crockett]

On Jun 13, 2010, at 2:21 PM, Doug Barton wrote:

>> The problem with the erroneous functioning of Microsoft's nslookup.exe
>> is that it requires a corporate wide change. There are a number of
>> reasonably intelligent users that assume nslookup.exe is providing them
>> correct information. I would need to convince management that it needs
>> to be replaced with the ISC version or convince them to deploy DiG to
>> all systems. Deploying DiG might be the easier as it doesn't replace
>> something distributed by Microsoft. At the same time, the tool that
>> users are familiar with is broken. It needs to be replaced. This will be
>> a "hard sale" to management.
> 
> That's a different scale of problem than what you originally described. :)  Without knowing more about your internal political/support/etc. structure it's hard to be sure what the "right" answer is. However if the scope is not "replace/augment nslookup for a few support techs" but rather "find a way to give a large number of, possibly non-technical users the right answers" then I would suggest that perhaps setting up an internal web page that explains the problem in the simplest possible terms, and provides a CGI with access to a working version of nslookup and/or dig so that they can get the answers they need might do the trick.

It's interesting that you should mention web-based tools.  I had developed several of these for a DoD customer in the latter half of the Nineties.  As a proof of concept, they were implemented on my local network.  They are still accessible after the last acquisition/merger of my company.  It wouldn't take much work to modify the PHP code that I used to eliminate some features that are no longer available due to corporate security policies.

Providing access to the web-based tools to IT personnel might not be that big of a challenge; however, the problem remains:  Using "nslookup" is an ingrained behavior for the general user.  It produces the "wrong" answers.  The result is unnecessary service requests that must be processed.  In my mind, this is the problem that needs to be addressed.  I'm still an Engineer although I was surreptitiously transferred from Engineering to Information Technology 5 years ago to resolve a "political" issue. 

--
Merton Campbell Crockett
m.c.crockett at roadrunner.com




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