khost – Simple DNS lookup utility

Synopsis

khost [options] name [server]

Description

This utility sends a DNS query for the name to the server and prints a reply in more user-readable form. For more advanced DNS queries use kdig instead.

Parameters

name
Is a domain name that is to be looked up. If the name is IPv4 or IPv6 address the PTR query type is used.
server
Is a name or an address of the nameserver to send a query to. The address can be specified using [address]:port notation. If no server is specified, the servers from /etc/resolv.conf are used.

If no arguments are provided, khost prints a short help.

Options

-4
Use the IPv4 protocol only.
-6
Use the IPv6 protocol only.
-a
Send ANY query with verbose mode.
-d
Enable debug messages.
-h, --help
Print the program help.
-r
Disable recursion.
-T
Use the TCP protocol.
-v
Enable verbose output.
-V, --version
Print the program version.
-w
Wait forever for the reply.
-c class
Set the query class (e.g. CH, CLASS4). The default class is IN.
-t type
Set the query type (e.g. NS, IXFR=12345, TYPE65535). The default is to send 3 queries (A, AAAA and MX).
-R retries
The number (>=0) of UDP retries to query a nameserver. The default is 1.
-W wait
The time to wait for a reply in seconds. This timeout applies to each query try. The default is 2 seconds.

Notes

Missing features with regard to ISC dig:

Options -C, -i, -l, -m, -N and -s.

Differences with regard to ISC host:

Option -d is not equivalent to -v, but enables debug messages.

The number of retries can be set to zero.

Verbose mode has slightly different format (same as kdig).

Examples

  1. Get the A, AAAA and MX records for example.com:

    $ khost example.com
    
  2. Get the reverse record for address 192.0.2.1:

    $ khost 192.0.2.1
    
  3. Perform a verbose zone transfer for zone example.com:

    $ khost -t AXFR -v example.com
    

Files

/etc/resolv.conf

See Also

kdig(1), knsupdate(1).