Performing DNS lookups with Dig

My coworker was configuring a Windows Update server recently, and the domain was being blocked. We realized that there was a DNS entry that redirected Windows Update traffic to a local server. The way that we discovered this was with the Unix “dig” command.

$ dig any windowsupdate.com

You can use dig to look up any type of DNS record, including CNAME, A, and MX records.

$ dig recordType windowsupdate.com

$ dig a windowsupdate.com

The analogous command on Windows is:

nslookup windowsupdate.com

NSLookup also works on Unix, but dig provides more information about a given domain.