dig and nslookup

[Jean Samarani]

Hi Community,

would anyone advise why we are able to get a result when we send a DNS query using nslookup while when using dig the answer section is empty ??

; <<>> DiG named 9.2.0 <<>>
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 35907
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0


Br/ Jean

[Matti_Kurkela]

HP-UX nslookup can use /etc/hosts in addition to DNS. The dig command uses DNS only.

MK

[Jean Samarani]

ok but the domain that I am querying exist in my DNS files only.

[rick jones]

IIRC dig will query for exactly what you give it, and only for that, whereas nslookup may go through the "try appending different suffixes based on either domain or search directives in /etc/resolv.conf" bit.

You might also try capturing the packets sent to port 53 when each command is run to see what other differences there might be in what sorts of queries dig forms vs nslookup.

[Norm Diederich]

Jean,

Try using did with the fully qualified domain name.

Also dig -X IP Address.

Regards,
Norm

[Bill Hassell]

nsquery is a better choice to follow the resolver steps. The resolver follows the instructions in /etc/nsswitch.conf and actually documents what it is doing at each step.

nsquery hosts 1.2.3.4
nsquery www.hp.com
nsquery mycomputer