dig (software)
dig is a command in various operating systems with which the servers of the global Domain Name System (DNS) can be queried.
The name is the abbreviation of "domain information groper" (literally translated from English: "scanner for domain information", but also a play on words with to dig , "dig out").
dig is seen as a more modern alternative to nslookup . It dispenses with the interactive operating mode of nslookup , but offers, especially as part of the open source BIND v9.x distribution of the ISC (BIND tools), more comprehensive query options for practically all DNS information in question. This makes it a powerful tool for testing and troubleshooting DNS installations, but can also be flexible as command-line tool and shell - scripts are used. A particular advantage of (ISC-BIND-) dig is the largely identical syntax of its command line parameters when used with all supported operating systems.
example
The following example shows a call from dig for the domain "de.wikipedia.org". The output informs, among other things, that the queried domain is a different name for "rr.wikimedia.org", which in turn stands for "rr.knams.wikimedia.org" and has the IP address "145.97.39.155". It can also be seen that the query ran via the name server "212.185.252.73".
$ dig de.wikipedia.org
; <<>> DiG 9.3.2 <<>> de.wikipedia.org
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 56546
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;de.wikipedia.org. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
de.wikipedia.org. 1288 IN CNAME rr.wikimedia.org.
rr.wikimedia.org. 593 IN CNAME rr.knams.wikimedia.org.
rr.knams.wikimedia.org. 3593 IN A 145.97.39.155
;; Query time: 55 msec
;; SERVER: 212.185.252.73#53(212.185.252.73)
;; WHEN: Wed Mar 14 17:09:47 2007
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 100