comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains FAQ - Section 3
UTILITIES

Question 3.1. Utilities to administer DNS zone files

Date: Tue Jan 7 00:22:31 EST 1997

There are a few utilities available to ease the administration of zone files in the DNS.

Two common ones are h2n and makezones. Both are perl scripts. h2n is used to convert host tables into zone data files. It is available for anonymous ftp from

ftp.uu.net : /published/oreilly/nutshell/dnsbind/dns.tar.Z

makezones works from a single file that looks like a forward zone file, with some additional syntax for special cases. It is included in the current BIND distribution. The newest version is always available for anonymous ftp from

ftp.cus.cam.ac.uk : /pub/software/programs/DNS/makezones

bpp is a m4 macro package for pre-processing the master files bind uses to define zones. Information on this package may be found at http://www.meme.com/soft.

More information on various DNS related utilities may be found using the DNS Resources Directory

http://www.dns.net/dnsrd/.

Question 3.2. DIG - Domain Internet Groper

Date: Thu Dec 1 11:09:11 EST 1994

The latest and greatest, official, accept-no-substitutes version of the Domain Internet Groper (DiG) is the one that comes with BIND. Get the latest kit.

Question 3.3. DNS packet analyzer

Date: Mon Jun 15 21:42:11 EDT 1998

There is a free ethernet analyzer called Ethload available for PC's running DOS. The latest filename is ETHLD200.ZIP. It understands lots of protocols including TCP/UDP. It'll look inside there and display DNS/BOOTP/ICMP packets etc. (Ed. note: something nice for someone to add to tcpdump ;^) ). Depending on the ethernet controller it's given it'll perform slightly differently. It handles NDIS/Novell/Packet drivers. It works best with Novell's promiscuous mode drivers. The current home page for Ethload is http://www.ping.be/ethload.

Question 3.4. host

Date: Thu Feb 11 14:43:39 EST 1999

A section from the host man page: 

     host looks for information about Internet hosts and domain
     names.  It gets this information from a set of intercon-
     nected servers that are spread across the world. The infor-
     mation is stored in the form of "resource records" belonging
     to hierarchically organized "zones".

     By default, the program simply converts between host names
     and Internet addresses. However, with the -t, -a and -v
     options, it can be used to find all of the information about
     domain names that is maintained by the domain nameserver
     system.  The information printed consists of various fields
     of the associated resource records that were retrieved.

     The arguments can be either host names (domain names) or
     numeric Internet addresses.
'host' is compatible with both BIND 4.9 and BIND 4.8

'host' may be found in contrib/host in the BIND distribution. The latest version always available for anonymous ftp from

ftp.nikhef.nl : /pub/network/host.tar.Z

It may also be found for anonymous ftp from

ftp.uu.net : /networking/ip/dns/host.tar.Z

Programs with some of the functionality of host for NT may be found at http://www.tucows.com under "Network Tools, DNS Lookup Utilities".

Question 3.5. How can I use DNS information in my program?

Date: Fri Feb 10 15:25:11 EST 1995

It depends on precisely what you want to do:

Question 3.6. A source of information relating to DNS

Mon Jan 18 20:35:49 EST 1999

You may find utilities and tools to help you manage your zone files (including WWW front-ends) in the "tools" section of the DNS resources directory:

http://www.dns.net/dnsrd/tools.html

Two that come to mind are MIT's WebDNS and the University of Utah tools.

There are also a number of commercial IP management tools available. Data Communications had an article on the subject in Sept/Oct of 1996. The tools mentioned in the article and a few others may be found at the following sites:

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Chris Peckham - 16 June 1999

Extracted from comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains Frequently Asked Questions, Copyright 1999.