Linux
The easy way to make dig more useful: .digrc
I’ve been a long-time “dig” user (on Mac and Linux) to retrieve DNS records before I start transferring a domain to a new registrar. Every time I issue the same dig commands to gather the data I need and put it in a text file for easy reference later. Dig always outputs way more information than I need and I end up fishing through most of it to find the one or two lines that interest me.
$ dig jssm.com any
; <<>> DiG 9.3.6-APPLE-P2 <<>> jssm.com any
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 37409
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 7, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;jssm.com. IN ANY
;; ANSWER SECTION:
jssm.com. 7200 IN MX 5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com. 7200 IN MX 0 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com. 7200 IN A 216.98.141.250
jssm.com. 7200 IN A 69.72.142.98
jssm.com. 7200 IN SOA ns8.zoneedit.com. soacontact.zoneedit.com. 1255263341 14400 7200 950400 7200
jssm.com. 7200 IN NS ns17.zoneedit.com.
jssm.com. 7200 IN NS ns8.zoneedit.com.
;; Query time: 62 msec
;; SERVER: 172.16.0.100#53(172.16.0.100)
;; WHEN: Tue Mar 9 10:10:20 2010
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 203
Dig Options
After perusing the man page for dig, I discovered the magical combination of options that hides all the stuff I don’t want to see while still returning all the data I do want to see: +nostats +nocomments +nocmd +noquestion +recurse.
Now my command is messy, cumbersome, and difficult to remember, but I have what I want:
$ dig +nostats +nocomments +nocmd +noquestion +recurse jssm.com any
jssm.com. 7200 IN MX 0 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com. 7200 IN MX 5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com. 7200 IN A 69.72.142.98
jssm.com. 7200 IN A 216.98.141.250
jssm.com. 7200 IN SOA ns8.zoneedit.com. soacontact.zoneedit.com. 1255263341 14400 7200 950400 7200
jssm.com. 7200 IN NS ns8.zoneedit.com.
jssm.com. 7200 IN NS ns17.zoneedit.com.
.digrc
I was delighted to see that dig supports a .digrc file for setting default options. I simply plopped the options I like into my ~/.digrc file all on a single line, issued my simple query, and voila! just the data I need without the extra stuff I don’t.
$ dig jssm.com any
jssm.com. 7200 IN MX 0 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com. 7200 IN MX 5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com. 7200 IN A 69.72.142.98
jssm.com. 7200 IN A 216.98.141.250
jssm.com. 7200 IN SOA ns8.zoneedit.com. soacontact.zoneedit.com. 1255263341 14400 7200 950400 7200
jssm.com. 7200 IN NS ns8.zoneedit.com.
jssm.com. 7200 IN NS ns17.zoneedit.com.
Bonus Syntax
I also discovered that dig supports multiple queries on the command line. I can now issue a single command and get all the DNS information I need for a domain:
$ dig jssm.com any www.jssm.com any mail.jssm.com any
jssm.com. 7200 IN MX 5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com. 7200 IN MX 0 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.com.
jssm.com. 7200 IN A 216.98.141.250
jssm.com. 7200 IN A 69.72.142.98
jssm.com. 7200 IN SOA ns8.zoneedit.com. soacontact.zoneedit.com. 1255263341 14400 7200 950400 7200
jssm.com. 7200 IN NS ns17.zoneedit.com.
jssm.com. 7200 IN NS ns8.zoneedit.com.
www.jssm.com. 7200 IN CNAME wfb.zoneedit.com.
wfb.zoneedit.com. 951 IN A 216.98.141.250
wfb.zoneedit.com. 951 IN A 69.72.142.98
mail.jssm.com. 7200 IN CNAME ghs.google.com.
Linux Mint–VMware Guest
Setting up Linux Mint as a VMware guest OS is pretty simple. Right out of the box with VMware Server 2.0, some of the functionality usually attributed to the VMware Tools was in place (most notably the auto capture/release of the keyboard and mouse).
I’ve always been one to use the official VMware Tools (VMT) with my VMs, but newer Linux kernels have changes that don’t allow various drivers included with VMT to compile, so I decided to try the Open Virtual Machine Tools this time around.
There’s an easy way to get the OVMT: install the Ubuntu package: sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools open-vm-toolbox. This works fine, but the tools are likely to be out of date. At present they are about 7 months out of date.
Here’s what I had to do to get the latest version installed from source:
- Download the open-vm-tools package
- Install the necessary development libraries: sudo apt-get install xorg-dev liburiparser-dev libpng-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgtkmm-2.4-dev libproc-dev libdumbnet-dev libicu-dev
- Compile the tools: make
- Install the tools: sudo make install
- reboot (may be optional)
VMware Server still prompts me to install the VMware Tools, but I think everything is running as it should be.
Linux Mint–Initial Configuration
I’ve finally bitten the bullet and installed Linux natively on my laptop. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time and I’m very glad to say that I have.
The first question to answer was that of distribution. There are so many out there, which one should I use? I’ve been a casual Linux user and system administrator for several distributions and my experiences there have led me to one conclusion: a Debian variant. RedHat is a decent distribution, but it uses RPM for packages and I’ve always felt that they’re a little clunky. I’ve experienced most of my package installation problems when dealing with RPMs.
Now that the Linux distribution family is chosen, which variant should I use? Debian is OK, but since it’s a little more difficult to use out of the box, I typically use it only for a server. Ubuntu has been my “go to” distribution since it’s based on Debian but is definitely designed for at least a techy, if not an end user. I recently heard about Linux Mint (an Ubuntu derivative) and how it supposedly takes Ubuntu to the next level with UI. Since I’ve had an Ubuntu installation on a VM at home for well over a year, I decided to go with Linux Mint. Read the rest of this entry »
CentOS
Installing Virtual Machine Additions
# rpm -i http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/updates/SRPMS/kernel-2.6.18-53.1.4.el5.src.rpm
Smitty's Thoughts 