Nslookup

Notes

Interactive commands

1. To interrupt interactive commands at any time, type CTRL+B.
2. To exit, type exit.
3. The command line length must be less than 256 characters.
4. To treat a built-in command as a computer name, precede it with the escape character (\).
5. An unrecognized command is interpreted as a computer name.

Diagnostics

If the lookup request fails, an error message prints. Possible errors include the following:

• Timed out

The server did not respond to a request after a certain amount of time (changed with set timeout=value) and a certain number of retries (changed with set retry=value).

• No response from server

No DNS name server is running on the server computer.

• No records

The DNS name server does not have resource records of the current query type for the computer, although the computer name is valid. The query type is specified with the set querytype command.

• Nonexistent domain

The computer or DNS domain name does not exist.

• Connection refused

-or-

Network is unreachable

The connection to the DNS name server or finger server could not be made. This error commonly occurs with ls and finger requests.

• Server failure

The DNS name server found an internal inconsistency in its database and could not return a valid answer.

• Refused

The DNS name server refused to service the request.

• Format error

The DNS name server found that the request packet was not in the proper format. It may indicate an error in nslookup.

References

For in-depth coverage of nslookup, see DNS and BIND by Paul Albitz and Cricket Liu, published by O'Reilly and Associates.

Windows 2000 Command Reference Main Page

Nslookup subcommands

Nslookup: ls

Nslookup: finger

Nslookup: set q[uerytype]