Configuring the Domain Name Service

nslookup interactive options

Here are the commonly used options of nslookup. For a complete list, see the manual page for nslookup(TC)

[no]recurse: Sets the query type to recursive. When toggled to norecurse, nslookup performs iterative queries.
querytype=type: Sets the query type to the DNS data type specified. Common types include a (Address), any (any data type), mx (Mail Exchanger), and ns (Name Server).
retry=n: Resends the query n times before giving up.
root=root server: Sets the root server to the server you enter.
timeout=n: The period of time nslookup waits for a response after the query is sent. This period doubles between each retry.

You can save any of these options in a .nslookuprc file in your home directory. The format of this file, which is searched for each time you invoke nslookup, is one set command per line. Here is an example, which sets the query type to address records, the domain to your_company.COM, and sets the timeout on requests to 10 seconds:

   set querytype=a
   set domain=your_company.COM
   set timeout=10