How to use the dig command on linux
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- Applies to: All Service Types
- Difficulty: Medium
- Time Needed: 10
- Tools Required: None
Overview
The command dig is a tool for querying DNS nameservers for information about host addresses, mail exchanges, nameservers, and related information. This tool can be used from any Linux (Unix) or Macintosh OS X operating system. The most typical use of dig is to simply query a single host.
Instructions
Run the command:
View the Output:
Understanding the Results
The opening section of dig’s output tells us a little about itself (version 9.4.1) and the global options that are set (in this case, printcmd ):
Here, dig tells us some technical details about the answer received from the DNS server. This section of the output can be toggled using the +[no]comments option—but beware that disabling the comments also turns off many section headers:
In the question section, dig reminds us of our query. The default query is for an Internet address ( A ).
Now we have our anwser, the address of mt-example.com is 205.186.150.66.
The final section of the default output contains statistics about the query; it can be toggled with the +[no]stats option.
A quick way to just get the answer only is to run the following command:
What can I find using the dig command?
dig will let you perform any valid DNS query, the most common of which are:
- A (the IP address),
- TXT (text annotations),
- MX (mail exchanges), and
- NS nameservers.
Use the following command to get the addresses for mt-example.com.
Use the following command to get a list of all the mailservers for mt-example.com.
Use the following command to get a list of authoritative DNS servers for mt-example.com.
Use the following command to get a list of all the above in one set of results.
Use the following command to query using a specific nameserver.
