From owner-freebsd-questions  Fri May 11 10:40: 8 2001
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To: Doug Barton <DougB@DougBarton.net>
Cc: Dale/Doug Cabell <nnmg@home.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Question regarding nslookup 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 10 May 2001 21:39:34 PDT."
             <3AFB6D06.690F7796@DougBarton.net> 
Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 10:39:57 -0700
From: "Kevin Oberman" <oberman@es.net>
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> Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 21:39:34 -0700
> From: Doug Barton <DougB@DougBarton.net>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
> 
> > Dale/Doug Cabell wrote:
> > 
> > Hi:
> > 
> > When you bring up nslookup
> 
> 	nslookup is useless for any real work. Use dig for serious DNS debugging,
> and host for simple lookups. Their man pages explain the details.
> 
> Doug
> 
> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
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> 

nslookup is worse than useless. It does not use the standard resolver
library, so it does not always get the same answer as the normal
library calls. This can lead to major confusion.

In BIND V9 nslookup prints the following when invoked:
Note:  nslookup is deprecated and may be removed from future releases.
Consider using the `dig' or `host' programs instead.  Run nslookup with
the `-sil[ent]' option to prevent this message from appearing.

dig is also much easier to work with if you are debugging and host is
far more practical when doing a simple lookup.
> host www.aol.com
www.aol.com. is an alias for aol.com.
aol.com. has address 205.188.160.121
aol.com. has address 64.12.149.13
aol.com. has address 64.12.149.24

> host 205.188.160.121
121.160.188.205.in-addr.arpa. domain name pointer www1.aol.com.

R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman@es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634

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