NSQUERY User's Manual January, 1989 This manual contains information about the use of NSQUERY, a program for testing Internet domain service (RFC 1035) name servers. Revision/Update Information: This is a new manual. Engineering Computing Services Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, New York ________________________ 09 January 1989 __________ Copyright ©1989 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute All Rights Reserved. Printed in U.S.A. This document was prepared using VAX DOCUMENT, Version 1.1 _______________________________________________________ Preface This document is intended for users of the NSQUERY program developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for VAX/VMS systems running CMU/Tektronix TCP/IP. The program currently runs under VAX/VMS V4.7 and V5.0-2 on CMU TCP/IP V6.3. The reader is expected to be familiar with, or at least have access to, the information in Internet RFC's 1034 and 1035. v _______________________________________________________ 1 Using NSQUERY NSQUERY is designed to be invoked as a DCL "foreign command": $ NSQ*UERY :== $disk:[dir]NSQUERY The command description on the following pages describes the qualifiers and parameters available with NSQUERY. 1-1 NSQUERY _______________________________________________________ NSQUERY-Issue a Name Service Query This command issues a query to an Internet domain server and displays the resultant reply. _______________________________________________________ FORMAT NSQUERY query-name [server] _______________________________________________________ Command Qualifiers Defaults /PORT=number /PORT=53 /PROTOCOL=proto /PROTOCOL=UDP /TYPE=qtype /TYPE=ALL /CLASS=qclass /CLASS=INTERNET _______________________________________________________ PARAMETERS query-name Name about which information should be obtained. This should be an internet dotted domain-style name. server Server to be queried. If omitted, defaults to "C.NYSER.NET". If the specified host name has multiple addresses, all addresses are obtained and each is tried until a query is successfully sent and reply received. _______________________________________________________ DESCRIPTION 1-2 NSQUERY All resource records defined in RFC 1035 are interpreted by NSQUERY. Refer to that RFC for information about the abbreviations used in the resource record display. All "time-to-live" values are displayed as VMS delta-time strings. NSQUERY never requests recursion nor does it note the availability of recursion from a server. Authoritative responses and truncated messages are noted before the resource records are displayed. _______________________________________________________ QUALIFIERS /PORT=port Directs the query to the specified TCP or UDP port. If omitted, port 53 (the port used by most, if not all, domain servers) is used. /PROTOCOL=proto Selects either TCP or UDP protocol. The default is UDP. UDP is generally used for simple domain queries; TCP is generally only used for major domain system events, such as zone transfers. /TYPE=qtype Selects the type of resource record to be returned about the name. The default is ALL, which selects all available resource record types. Available types are as follows: Table 1-1 Resource record types _______________________________________________________ Type/QType_______Description___________________________ A host address NS authoritative name server MD mail destination (obsolete) 1-3 NSQUERY Table 1-1 (Cont.) Resource record types _______________________________________________________ Type/QType_______Description___________________________ MF mail forwarder (obsolete) CNAME canonical name for an alias SOA start of zone authority MB mailbox domain name (experimental) MG mail group member (experimental) MR mail rename domain name (experimental) NULL null resource record WKS well-known service description PTR domain name pointer HINFO host information MINFO mailbox or mail list information MX mail exchange TXT text strings AXFR complete zone transfer MAILB all mailbox-related records (MB, MG, MR) MAILA all mail agent records (obsolete) _______________________________________________________ 1-4 NSQUERY Refer to RFC 1035 for a complete description of resource record types and their uses. Note that not all servers support all record types. You should probably never attempt to use the AXFR query type. /CLASS=qclass Selects the class of resource records to be returned. The default is INTERNET. Available qclass values are: Table 1-2 Resource record classes _______________________________________________________ Class/QClass_____Description___________________________ INTERNET the Internet CSNET the CSNET class (obsolete) CHAOSNET the CHAOS class HESIOD the Hesiod class ALL all classes _______________________________________________________ For more information about resource record class values, see RFC 1035. Note that not all servers support all classes; most servers' authority extends only over Internet-class information. 1-5 NSQUERY Example 1-0 _______________________________________________________ $ NSQUERY RPI.EDU FS3.CS.RPI.EDU %NSQUERY-I-TRYNS, trying address 128.213.1.14... %NSQUERY-I-AUTHRESP, authoritative response %NSQUERY-I-QUERYOK, query operation completed successfully QUERY #1: QName=RPI.EDU., QType=255, QClass=1 ANSWER #1: RPI.EDU., SOA, INTERNET, 0 01:00:00 Primary NS: fs3.cs.rpi.edu.rpi.edu. Responsible: weltyc.fs3.cs.rpi.edu. Serial=600010, Refresh= 1 06:00:00, Retry= 0 00:05:00 Expire= 41 16:00:00, Minimum= 0 01:00:00 ANSWER #2: RPI.EDU., NS, INTERNET, 0 01:00:00, NS=fs3.cs.rpi.edu. ANSWER #3: RPI.EDU., NS, INTERNET, 0 01:00:00, NS=columbia.edu. ANSWER #4: RPI.EDU., NS, INTERNET, 0 01:00:00, NS=nisc.nyser.net. ADDTNL #1: fs3.cs.rpi.edu., A, INTERNET, 0 01:00:00, Addr=128.213.1.14 ADDTNL #2: columbia.edu., A, INTERNET, 1 21:28:12, Addr=128.59.16.1 ADDTNL #3: columbia.edu., A, INTERNET, 1 21:28:12, Addr=128.59.32.1 ADDTNL #4: columbia.edu., A, INTERNET, 1 21:28:12, Addr=128.121.13.2 ADDTNL_#5:_nisc.nyser.net.,_A,_INTERNET,____0_00:02:00, Addr=192.33.4.10 1-6