Unable to query the nameserver

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2010 10:35:32 -0400
> From: Kevin Darcy <kcd at chrysler.com>
> Sender: bind-users-bounces+oberman=es.net at lists.isc.org
> 
> On 10/5/2010 3:49 PM, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 20:30, Eivind Olsen<eivind at aminor.no>  wrote:
> >    
> >>> However, another site that _does_ work (with both nameservers on this
> >>> host, not just ns1) shows the same thing:
> >>>
> >>> # nslookup ns1.sharingserver.eu 178.63.65.136
> >>> Server:         178.63.65.136
> >>> Address:        178.63.65.136#53
> >>>
> >>> ** server can't find ns1.sharingserver.eu: NXDOMAIN
> >>>        
> >> How do you mean this one is working? It's working just as badly as your
> >> first example.
> >>
> >>      
> > Yes, but typing the domain into Firefox brings up the webpage that
> > I've put on that server!
> >
> >
> >    
> You're introducing a bunch of other variables when you use a browser to 
> troubleshoot a DNS resolution problem:
> 1) The browser might have cached the DNS response
> 2) The browser might have cached the web content itself and not be 
> performing DNS lookups
> 3) The browser might be using a PAC (proxy auto-config) file which 
> shuffles the request off to some proxy
> 
> I would suggest sticking to DNS troubleshooting tools to troubleshoot 
> DNS. And dig/host is to be greatly preferred for that purpose over 
> nslookup, which sucks in more ways than I care to list here.

I keep hoping for a BIND distro that upgrades nslookup(1) to:
  print STDERR, "nslookup(1) has been replaced by host(1)\n"; exit 0;

I've been wishing that nslookup would go away since back in BIND-v4
days. I could save a lot of troubleshooting time if I didn't get trouble
reports based on the use of nslookup that is misleading or not
completely bogus.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751