Name

dnsqr — query a proxy DNS server using the DNS protocol

Synopsis

dnsqr {t} {fqdn}

Description

dnsqr looks up resource records of type t for fqdn by making a Domain Name System request to the configured local proxy DNS server(s). It prints the results in a human-readable format, more compact than the dig(1) output format.

It expects to query a proxy DNS server, and the request is marked as recursive. t may be a name or a number. Currently recognized names are: any, a, ns, mx, ptr, txt, cname, soa, loc, hinfo, rp, sig, key, aaaa, axfr, and srv.

dnsqr makes all DNS lookups using the locally configured DNS proxy server(s), and performs no name qualification on what is taken to already be a "fully-qualified" domain name (trailing dot or no) fqdn. See djbdns-client(5) for how this server is found.

Caution

dnsqr is a diagnostic tool, and thus permits using improper values of t.

Note

dnsqr axfr , dnsqr any , and dnsqr opt simulate things that valid DNS clients will not actually do. See RFC 8482 for the particular case of any passing into desuetude, and RFC 6891 for why opt is never a valid client query type.

Note

Because dnsqr is a diagnostic tool, certain standard fqdns, that normally short-circuit DNS lookups to the proxy DNS server(s) inside the DNS client library, will not do so and will instead generate query traffic for domain names that are in normal operation not queried. dnscache(1) synthesizes much the same fixed responses to these queries as the DNS client library itself synthesizes. Other proxy DNS servers (and indeed the original Bernstein dnscache(1)) may not do, and may generate bogus traffic to the public "." content DNS servers and other content DNS servers, yielding possibly bogus answers.

See also

dnsq(1)

a similar tool that makes requests to content DNS servers

tinydns-get(1)

a tool that makes direct queries against a content DNS server's database

History

dnsqr was originally part of Daniel J. Bernstein's djbdns toolset in 1999.

Author

Original code and documentation by Daniel J. Bernstein. Documentation modernizations by Jonathan de Boyne Pollard.