RE: How to do a dns lookup on a system without

That's a good question.
Now I remember why I prefer NSLOOKUP to PING. NSLOOKUP has the DMNNAMSVR
parameter. The problem with using PING is that PING may not refresh in
the time needed. Let me detail this for you...

We're doing a HA switch.
As part of the switch we do this long convoluted process from IBM i to
automatically change our DNS from our primary IP address to our backup IP
address.
This process has IBM i talking to one pc, which must be signed on as a
particular user. This pc then talks to our DNS and updates the DNS. We
used to talk to the DNS server directly but a Windows server upgrade
slapped the cones of silence on it and killed IBM i from being able to run
remote commands on it.

What I am trying to do is to have a test process in place to ensure the
communication works by changing a dummy name from one IP address to
another and nslookup the name, from that server, and get the IP address
and ensure that the switch worked.

If I use nslookup and specify the dns server it will get the current IP
address. If I try PING I have to flush the DNS cache a few times,
sacrifice an unblemished ram and maybe it will return the newest IP
address. Flushing the cache involves the manual process of CFGTCP, 12.
Change TCP/IP domain information and entering through that.

Now that I study this gethostbyname doesn't allow me to specify the domain
name server so it may not be any better than ping.
That's the long way of saying, damn it, you're right!


Rob Berendt