Open System Services Shell and Utilities Reference Manual (G06.27+, H06.04+)

Administrator Commands and Files dig(8)
+[no]multiline Print [do not print] records like the SOA records in a verbose
multiline format with human-readable comments. The default is
to print each record on a single line, to facilitate machine pars-
ing of the dig output.
+[no]fail Try [do not try] the next server if you receive a SERVFAIL
response. The default is to not try the next server, which is the
reverse of normal stub resolver behavior.
+[no]besteffort
Display [do not display] the contents of messages which are
malformed. The default is to not display malformed answers.
+[no]dnssec Request [do not request] that DNSSEC records be sent by setting
the DNSSEC OK bit (DO) in the OPT record in the additional
section of the query.
+[no]sigchase Chase [do not chase] DNSSEC signature chains. Requires that
dig be compiled with -DDIG_SIGCHASE.
+trusted-key=key
Specify a trusted key to be used with +sigchase. Requires that
dig be compiled with -DDIG_SIGCHASE.
+[no]topdown Perform [do not perform] a top-down validation when chasing
DNSSEC signature chains. Requires that dig be compiled with
-DDIG_SIGCHASE.
name Specifies the relative or absolute name of the server to return information for.
type Specifies the type of information to be returned.
class Specifies the class of information to be returned.
DESCRIPTION
dig is a tool for interrogating DNS name servers. It performs DNS lookups and displays the
answers that are returned from the name servers that were queried. Most DNS administrators use
dig to troubleshoot DNS problems because of its flexibility, ease of use, and clarity of output.
Although dig is normally used with command-line arguments, it also has a batch mode of opera-
tion for reading lookup requests from a file. A brief summary of its command-line arguments and
options is printed when the -h option is given.
Unlike earlier versions, the BIND 9 implementation of dig allows multiple lookups to be issued
from the command line. Unless it is told to query a specific name server, dig tries each of the
servers listed in the /etc/resolv.conf file.
You can set per-user defaults for dig in the file $HOME/.digrc. This file is read and any options
in it are applied before the command line values are processed.
Simple Usage
A typical invocation of dig looks like:
dig @server name type
where:
server is the name or IP address of the name server to query. This can be an IPv4
address in dotted-decimal notation or an IPv6 address in colon-delimited nota-
tion. When the supplied server argument is a hostname, dig resolves that name
before querying that name server. If no server argument is provided, dig reads
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