Re: nslookup

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

Typing "nslookup" (no quotes obvisouly) in the command window

Don't do that.

Has the Hosts file in the path:
c:\windows\drivers\etc\ antyhthing to do with this

Not for nslookup.

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

gh> A feature that used to exist in DNS, that was only used by NSLOOKUP
gh> was removed. That feature used the DNS inverse lookup, not the
gh> reverse lookup which is commonly discussed.

The output that he is seeing, and reporting, from "nslookup" is nothing
to do with that, however.

gh> Personally, I believe that if there is one thing a DNS server should
gh> know, it is its own address [...]

From context, you actually mean that you believe that a DNS server
should know the address->name mapping for its own address. (There's no
way that a DNS server can *not* know its own address, since it has to
arrange to listen() on it, after all.) That's wrong. It's not
necessary for a content DNS server to be responsible for the publication
of the address->name mapping for its own address. Indeed, this is in
practice the case for vast numbers of content DNS servers. And it's not
necessary for a content DNS server to know that address->name mapping if
it isn't the content DNS server responsible for its publication.

gh> there was no reason to remove this feature.

There was very good reason to remove the inverse lookup "feature" from
DNS servers: That part of the DNS protocol went away (inasmuch as it was
ever there in the first place). Inverse queries are obsolete. See RFC
3425. "nslookup" has long since been modified to perform reverse
lookups rather than inverse lookups.

gh> Anyway, it is completely unrelated to any other problem you may have.

What you are discussing is completely unrelated to *this*
(self-inflicted) problem that he has, too.

gh> Only NSLOOKUP uses that feature.

"nslookup" hasn't used inverse queries since BIND version 4.9. And the
reverse lookup feature that his "nslookup" *is*, in fact, using is used
by quite a lot of softwares.