What does the Dig command do?
Domain Information Groper, or DIG for short, is a wonderful command-line utility. To provide comprehensive details on mail exchanges, host addresses, and other relevant information, we use Dig to query the DNS name server. This utility is compatible with a variety of operating systems, including Linux and macOS.
You can do DNS queries using the built-in Linux Dig command by using the Terminal application. Your domain can be troubleshot, and you can learn a lot of details about it, such as DNS records, Name servers, and general network information. Its excellent features include having more functionality than some built-in utilities, like nslookup, and being quite simple to use. Because of this, despite having a straightforward command-line interface, many network administrators use it often.
The most popular examples of the Dig command!
For what do we use it?
You can inspect and check a name server and various kinds of DNS records and finish a reverse DNS, among other things, with the help of the Dig command. You should try the dig command because it is more powerful than less powerful software such as nslookup and ping and can do the following:
- You can use it to check every name server.
- Once you have viewed a name server via an earlier probe, you can probe that specific name server.
- You might look for every DNS record for your domain that is accessible.
- It allowed you to search precisely for certain DNS record types, such as A, AAAA, MX, NS, SOA, TXT, CNAME, and others.
- In contrast to the host command, the dig command clearly separates the question, answer, authority, and additional sections.
- You can execute a reverse DNS lookup by looking up an IP address (IPv4 or IPv6) and the hostname it belongs to.
- You may follow a DNS query’s path from a particular location, such as your device or another resolver, to the hostname or IP address.
How to use the Dig command?
The Dig command is already preinstalled in the majority of Linux distributions. Use the following command to see if you have it if you are running Linux:
dig -v
You will see the version if you have it (for example, DiG 9.11.3-1ubuntu1.7-Ubuntu) and “dig command not found” if you don’t.
Don’t be concerned if you receive a nasty message. It is simple to install.
Linux Mint, Kali Linux, and other Debian- and Ubuntu-based operating systems.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install dnsutils
CentOS, Fedora, or Red Hat.
sudo yum install bind-utils
Manjaro, Arch Linux, and other distributions based on Arch.
sudo pacman -S bind-tools
Conclusion
Linux Operating System is really valuable and helpful. Why? Because with it, in the Terminal application, you can test a lot of Linux commands (Ping, Host, Sudo, Cat, etc.). And the dig command is one of them. Moreover, it is a network tool for learning about domain name servers. So, if you are new in the DNS world, you need to know it.