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.

Exit values

Exit status of 0 means successful operation. Any other exit status indicates an error.

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).