dig

How to use dig ? Welcome to my Cheatsheet!

Important note: dig bypasses the “normal” DNS resolution from the host. If you want to mimic application level DNS resolution results, dig might not be a good fit.

General

Main usage:

dig @server type name

• type: A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, NS, TXT, NULL

Reverse lookup:

dig -x 8.8.8.8

Response Formatting

Get only the returned IP (script friendly output):

$ dig +short google.com
172.217.20.14

Get only the answer section:

$ dig +noall +answer google.com
google.com.         66      IN      A       172.217.20.14

Formatting options can be made persistent by writting them in ~/.digrc file.

Trace

With +trace option, dig acts like a recursive resolver. It follows the query path, starting from the root servers until the name is resovled. All intermediate responses are printed on the console:

dig +trace google.com