Using whois and dig to investigate domain name and DNS records
Contents
Introduction
This page is intended to provide a basic guide to two very handy tools, whois and dig, for the purposes of investigating domain and DNS records.
Using whois
Whois is used for finding information about a domain's registration. The amount of information available will depend on the type of gTLD or ccTLD, and the registrar of the domain. For instance, the information provided for most .au domains is limited to the registrar name, registrant name and email address, domain status, and nameservers. Many other registries, including those of .com, .net, and .org, provide full registrant contact details, domain registration and expiration dates, as well as the registrant name, domain status, and nameservers.
Web-based whois queries
Some (especially small or newly-available) TLD registries have no whois servers, but provide other ways to query their databases, such as from the registry's website. If so, a link will generally be provided in the text of the whois information. For example, running whois on a .fm domain:
$ whois last.fm This TLD has no whois server, but you can access the whois database at http://www.dot.fm/whois.html
Others may provide only limited information on their whois servers, and require access via their website for the full information. Ausregistry, the .au registry administrator, is one of these. For example:
$ whois anchor.com.au Domain Name: anchor.com.au Last Modified: 09-May-2008 02:03:16 UTC Registrar ID: Anchor Systems Registrar Name: Anchor Systems Status: ok Registrant: ANCHOR SYSTEMS PTY LTD Registrant ID: ACN 093848278 Eligibility Type: Company Eligibility Name: ANCHOR SYSTEMS PTY LTD Eligibility ID: ACN 093848278 Registrant Contact ID: AS0043966 Registrant Contact Name: The Manager Registrant Contact Email: Visit whois.ausregistry.com.au for Web based WhoIs Tech Contact ID: AS0105220 Tech Contact Name: The Manager Tech Contact Email: Visit whois.ausregistry.com.au for Web based WhoIs Name Server: ns2.anchor.net.au Name Server IP: 202.4.234.251 Name Server: ns1.anchor.net.au Name Server IP: 202.4.235.59
Visiting http://whois.ausregistry.com.au and running the same query will show the registrant and tech contact email addresses.
Using dig
Dig stands for "domain information groper", and is used for contacting DNS nameservers and retrieving records.
Basic usage
By default, dig will request the A record of whatever address is queried. This will return the IP address of the server hosting that website. As an example, let's look up the IP address of the web server hosting www.anchor.com.au:
$ dig www.anchor.com.au ; <<>> DiG 9.4.2 <<>> www.anchor.com.au ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 24518 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.anchor.com.au. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: www.anchor.com.au. 86400 IN A 202.4.234.96 ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: anchor.com.au. 3600 IN NS ns2.anchor.net.au. anchor.com.au. 3600 IN NS ns1.anchor.net.au. ;; Query time: 90 msec ;; SERVER: 10.108.62.2#53(10.108.62.2) ;; WHEN: Fri Nov 28 16:44:22 2008 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 98
The information we're after is usually just in the ANSWER SECTION. While the other details can be handy for diagnosing problems, a terse answer can be provided by using the +short option.
$ dig www.anchor.com.au +short 202.4.234.96
Other types of records can be requested by specifying the desired type. For example:
$ dig anchor.com.au mx +short 10 av1.anchor.net.au. 20 smtp2.anchor.net.au.
Specific nameservers
dig can be used to contact specific nameservers, using the syntax:
dig @NAMESERVER DOMAIN
At Anchor, we most often use this to check that a domain's records on our nameservers are correct before redelegating it.
It can also be handy if the domain has been redelegated incorrectly or too early, and the current nameservers have useless records. By querying it up on the old nameservers, the IP address of the server previously hosting the site can then be used to retrieve the old content.
Reverse lookups
PTR records can be retrieved with the -x option.
Zone transfers
dig axfr. Many (most) nameservers don't support it, but general info on transferring zones, commonly present records, etc.
More DNS information
More information about DNS is available at: How DNS works.
Web-based tools
Both whois and dig are standard tools included with most distributions of Linux. If you don't have easy access to a Linux machine, there are a number of web-based whois and DNS lookup tools available. A few of the most popular are: