DNS on Windows Server 2003, 3rd Edition

Looking Up the Right Data

This isn’t really a problem, per se, but it can be awfully confusing. If you use nslookup to look up a type of data for a domain name and the domain name exists but no data of the type you’re looking for exists, you’ll get an error like this:

C:\> nslookup 
Default Server:  terminator.movie.edu 
Address:  192.249.249.3 

> movie.edu. 

Name:    movie.edu

>

Huh? It looks like we got an empty answer. In fact, that’s exactly what happened: there are no A records for movie.edu, and the response from the name server has no records in the Answer section of the message. nslookup renders this empty response from the name server as an empty response to us. It’s not very helpful or clear (previous versions of nslookup printed a better response).

So what types of records do exist? You can use set type=any to find out:

> set type=any 
> movie.edu. Server: terminator.movie.edu Address: 192.249.249.3 movie.edu nameserver = terminator.movie.edu movie.edu nameserver = wormhole.movie.edu movie.edu primary name server = terminator.movie.edu responsible mail addr = hostmaster.movie.edu serial = 21 refresh = 900 (15 mins) retry = 600 (10 mins) expire = 86400 (1 day) default TTL = 3600 (1 hour) movie.edu MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = wormhole.movie.edu terminator.movie.edu internet address = 192.249.249.3 wormhole.movie.edu internet address = 192.249.249.1 wormhole.movie.edu internet address = 192.253.253.1 wormhole.movie.edu internet address = 192.253.253.1 wormhole.movie.edu internet ...