nslookup oddities (Was: SRV record not working)

[Doug Barton]

On 08/19/2018 12:11 PM, Lee wrote:
> On 8/18/18, Doug Barton <dougb at dougbarton.us> wrote:

>> nslookup uses the local resolver stub. That's fine, if that's what you
>> want/need to test. If you want to test specific servers, or what is
>> visible from the Internet, etc. dig is the right tool, as the answers
>> you get from nslookup cannot be guaranteed to be directly related to the
>> question you asked.
> 
> Could you expand on that a bit please?  I thought
>    nslookup <name> <server>
> was pretty much equivalent to
>   dig <name> @<server>
> 
> the exception being that nslookup looks for a & aaaa records and dig
> just looks for a records

Nope. Depending on what operating system you're on, what version of 
nslookup you have, how you format your query, and how the system is 
configured; even telling nslookup to query a specific server may not get 
you the answer you're looking for.

If you want to know what answer your stub resolver is going to return 
for a given query, nslookup is a great tool. Although, if you just need 
to know what address record you'll get back, ping works just as well.

If you want to really debug DNS you need to learn to use dig, and 
understand the output.