IvmaiDNS

Preface

IvmaiDNS is a pure java DNS client implementation. It consists of a library and utilities for looking up the Internet domain names. The utilities are also able to fetch an entire domain zone and save it in the standard DNS zone file format.

Disclaimer

You use this software at your own risk. This application is for legal use only. All rights reserved.

Installation

Download the binary distributive file appropriate to your host platform.

Extract the contents of the distributive file (preserving the directories structure) into any appropriate place (eg., "C:\Program Files" for Windows, "/usr/share" for Linux and Solaris) on your hard drive. No other setup is required.

To uninstall the software, just remove "ivmaidns" directory.

Supported platforms

IvmaiDNS tools are officially built for the following platforms:

• JavaVM (J2SE/JDK v1.2+);
• Windows x86 (Win95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/Win7);
• Linux x86 (tested on CentOS);
• Sun Solaris amd64.

The native binary files (for Win32, Linux, Solaris) are created using the JCGO tool and the corresponding C/C++ compiler.

General

The major goals of this project are:

• develop a pure java library implementing DNS (domain name system) basic primitives and simplifying development of a DNS client application;
• develop a tool (named "dnslook") similar to the well-known Unix nslookup one but with the ability to save fetched domain zones in the standard DNS server zone format;
• develop a multi-threaded interactive console tool getting DNS zones in parallel and recursively equipped with a load balancing algorithm.

Usage directions for dnslook

Synopsis:

dnslook [-z] [-n] [-p] [<dns_server>] <name> [[-d] <out_txt_file>]

Options:

• -d <out_txt_file> Save records to a given file
• -p Save records in the plain format
• -z Get all records for the domain
• -n Look up only name server records (if used without -z)
• -n Try all available name servers until success (if with -z)

Information (displayed if invoked without parameters):

This utility allows the user to look up Internet DNS records and entire domains of a given name from the specified server. Every such record consists of its name, the class (IN), time-to-live value, its type (mostly A, NS, MX, CNAME, PTR or SOA), and its value according to its type. Refer to RFC1035 document for more information on DNS.

Here, if <dns_server> parameter is omitted then the default server is used. If an optional <out_txt_file> name is specified then the looked up records are all saved to it in the standard DNS zone file format, which is either plain (the fields of the records are tab-separated) if -p option is set or blank-padded (with the records sorted ascending and duplicated records removed). By default, all the records of a given name are looked up, but setting of -n option causes the utility to look up only name server records.

To look up an entire domain (zone) -z option must be set (but, this operation succeeds only if zone transferring is allowed by the server). If -n option is set in addition to -z option then all of the authoritative name servers for a given domain are sequentially tried to look up the entire domain from until it succeeds.

Usage directions for dnszcon

Synopsis:

dnszcon <out_text_file>

Options: none.

Information (displayed if invoked without parameters):

This tool allows the user to fetch (retrieve) Internet DNS records and entire DNS zones of a given name from their authoritative name servers. The tool is an interactive console program which processes user retrieval queries asynchronously in the background (up to 30 queries to different name servers at a time). All retrieved records are immediately put into the built-in sorted storage, which may be listed by user at run-time, and which is saved to the specified file (in a textual tab-separated format) on exit. An entire zone retrieving (zone transferring) is possible only if it is allowed at least by one of its authoritative name servers. Subzones for the zone being transferred are retrieved only in the recursive mode.

Interactive console commands:

• <zone> <server1> ... - get and list name server records for <zone>
• ?<name> <server1> ... - try to retrieve all records for <name>
• !<zone> <server1> ... - try to retrieve entire <zone>
• <zone> - list all retrieved records for <zone> and its subzones
• "+" - enable recursive mode
• "-" - disable recursive mode (default)
• "?" - view retriever activity and memory utilization
• "&" - pause/resume activity
• "!" - show statistics, save retrieved records to file and exit