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).