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What's the command-line utility in Windows to do a reverse DNS look-up?

Is there a built-in command line tool that will do reverse DNS look-ups in Windows? I.e., something like <toolname> w.x.y.z => mycomputername

I've tried:

• nslookup: seems to be forward look-up only.
• host: doesn't exist
• dig: also doesn't exist.

I found "What's the reverse DNS command line utility?" via a search, but this is specifically looking for a *nix utility, not a Windows one.

Is a wildcard CNAME DNS record valid?

I know it's valid to have a DNS A record that's a wildcard (e.g. *.mysite.com). Is it possible/valid/advised to have a wildcard CNAME record?

How the heck is http://to./ a valid domain name?

Apparently it's a URL shortener. It resolves just fine in Chrome and Firefox. How is this a valid top-level domain?

Update: for the people saying it's browser shenanigans, why is it that: http://com./ does not take me to: http://www.com/?

And, do browsers ever send you a response from some place other than what's actually up in the address bar? Aside from framesets and things like that, I thought browsers tried really hard to send you content only from the site in the address bar, to help guard against phishing.

Setting the hostname: FQDN or short name?

I've noticed that the "preferred" method of setting the system hostname is fundamentally different between Red Hat/CentOS and Debian/Ubuntu systems.

CentOS documentation and the RHEL deployment guide say the hostname should be the FQDN:

HOSTNAME=<value>, where <value> should be the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), such as hostname.example.com, but can be whatever hostname is necessary.

The RHEL install guide is slightly more ambiguous:

Setup prompts you to supply a host name for this computer, either as a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) in the format hostname.domainname or as a short host name in the format hostname.

The Debian reference says the hostname should not use the FQDN:

3.5.5. The hostname

The kernel maintains the system hostname. The init script in runlevel S which is symlinked to "/etc/init.d/hostname.sh" sets the system hostname at boot time (using the hostname command) to the name stored in "/etc/hostname". This file should contain only the system hostname, not a fully qualified domain name.

I haven't seen any specific recommendations from IBM about which to use, but some software seems to have a preference.

My questions:

• In a heterogeneous environment, is it better to use the vendor recommendation, or choose one and be consistent across all hosts?
• What software have you encountered which is sensitive to whether the hostname is set to the FQDN or short name?

Linux command to inspect TXT records of a domain

Is there a linux shell command that I can use to inspect the TXT records of a domain?

Why can't MX records point to an IP address?

I understand you should not point a MX record at an IP address directly, but should instead point it to an A record, which, in turns, points to the IP address of your mail server.

But, in principle, why is this required?

How can I see Time-To-Live (TTL) for a DNS record?

I would like to see the Time-To-Live (TTL) value for a CNAME record.

I have access to dig (on Apple Mac OS X), which gives me an answer like this:

% dig host.example.gov
<*SNIP*>
;; ANSWER SECTION:
host.example.gov.       43200   IN  CNAME   host1.example.gov.
host1.example.gov.      43200   IN  A       192.168.16.10

Is the value '43200' the TTL for this DNS record?

Should we host our own nameservers?

This is a Canonical Question about whether to outsource DNS resolution for ones own domains

I currently have my ISP providing DNS for my domain, but they impose limitations on adding records. Therefore, I am thinking about running my own DNS.

Do you prefer to host your own DNS, or is it better to have your ISP do this?

Are there alternatives which I can look into?

How to Configure Windows Machine to Allow File Sharing with DNS Alias

What process is necessary to configure a Windows environement to allow me to use DNS CNAME to reference servers?

I want to do this so that I can name my servers something like SRV001, but still have \\file point to that server, so when SRV002 replaces it I don't have to update any of the links people have, just update the DNS CNAME and everyone will get pointed to the new server.

Top level domain/domain suffix for private network?

At our office, we have a local area network with a purely internal DNS setup, on which clients all named as whatever.lan. I also have a VMware environment, and on the virtual-machine-only network, I name the virtual machines whatever.vm.

Currently, this network for the virtual machines isn't reachable from our local area network, but we're setting up a production network to migrate these virtual machines to, which will be reachable from the LAN. As a result, we're trying to settle on a convention for the domain suffix/TLD we apply to the guests on this new network we're setting up, but we can't come up with a good one, given that .vm, .local and .lan all have existing connotations in our environment.

So, what's the best practice in this situation? Is there a list of TLDs or domain names somewhere that's safe to use for a purely internal network?

Why is DNS failover not recommended?

From reading, it seems like DNS failover is not recommended just because DNS wasn't designed for it. But if you have two webservers on different subnets hosting redundant content, what other methods are there to ensure that all traffic gets routed to the live server if one server goes down?

To me it seems like DNS failover is the only failover option here, but the consensus is it's not a good option. Yet services like DNSmadeeasy.com provide it, so there must be merit to it. Any comments?

is a CNAME to CNAME chain allowed

Is it allowed in DNS to have a CNAME record that points to another CNAME record?

The reason we need this is that we have a hostname that we want to be looked up to the IP address of our web server computer. We also have another web server computer stand by that could be activated in case the first one would die. In such a case we would quickly need to point the hostname to the IP address of the stand by web server computer.

Unfortunately the hostname resides in a DNS domain where any change would take long time due to manual operation dependent on other sysadmins. But we have another DNS domain where we can perform the changes ourselves quickly. Having CNAME to CNAME chain seems like a possible solution. But is it allowed? Will web browsers understand it?

Windows 7: "localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself". Why?

After 18 years of hosts files on Windows, I was surprised to see this in Windows 7 build 7100:

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
#   127.0.0.1 localhost
#   ::1 localhost

Does anyone know why this change was introduced? I'm sure there has to be some kind reasoning.

And, perhaps more relevantly, are there any other important DNS-related changes in Windows 7? It scares me a little bit to think that something as fundamental as localhost name resolution has changed... makes me think there are other subtle but important changes to the DNS stack in Win7.

Phishing site uses subdomain that I never registered

I recently received the following message from Google Webmaster Tools:

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://gotgenes.com/,

[...]

Below are one or more example URLs on your site which may be part of a phishing attack:

http://repair.gotgenes.com/~elmsa/.your-account.php

[...]

What I don't understand is that I never had a subdomain repair.gotgenes.com, but visiting it in the web browser gives an actual My DNS is FreeDNS, which does not list a repair subdomain. My domain name is registered with GoDaddy, and the nameservers are correctly set to NS1.AFRAID.ORG, NS2.AFRAID.ORG, NS3.AFRAID.ORG, and NS4.AFRAID.ORG.

I have the following questions:

1. Where is repair.gotgenes.com actually registered?
2. How was it registered?
3. What action can I take to have it removed from DNSs?
4. How can I prevent this from happening in the future?

This is pretty disconcerting; I feel like my domain has been hijacked. Any help would be much appreciated.

Why can't a CNAME record be used at the apex (aka root) of a domain?

This is a Canonical Question about CNAMEs at the apices (or roots) of zones

It's relatively common knowledge that CNAME records at the apex of a domain are a taboo practice.

Example: example.com. IN CNAME ithurts.example.net.

In a best case scenario nameserver software might refuse to load the configuration, and in the worst case it might accept this configuration and invalidate the configuration for example.com.

Recently I had a webhosting company pass instructions to a business unit that we needed to CNAME the apex of our domain to a new record. Knowing that this would be a suicide config when fed to BIND, I advised them that we would not be able to comply and that this was bunk advice in general. The webhosting company took the stance that it is not outright forbidden by standard defining RFCs and that their software supports it. If we could not CNAME the apex, their advice was to have no apex record at all and they would not provide a redirecting webserver. ...What?

Most of us know that RFC1912 insists that A CNAME record is not allowed to coexist with any other data., but let's be honest with ourselves here, that RFC is only Informational. The closest I know to verbiage that forbids the practice is from RFC1034:

If a CNAME RR is present at a node, no other data should be present; this ensures that the data for a canonical name and its aliases cannot be different.

Unfortunately I've been in the industry long enough to know that "should not" is not the same as "must not", and that's enough rope for most software designers to hang themselves with. Knowing that anything short of a concise link to a slam dunk would be a waste of my time, I ended up letting the company get away with a scolding for recommending configurations that could break commonly used software without proper disclosure.

This brings us to the Q&A. For once I'd like us to get really technical about the insanity of apex CNAMEs, and not skirt around the issue like we usually do when someone posts on the subject. RFC1912 is off limits, as are any other Informational RFC applicable here that I didn't think of. Let's shut this baby down.