Domain name system

DNS

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Updated: 05 September 2025

DNS Records

Type Purpose Note
CNAME Points subdomain to another website (not an IP). Will forward all requests and ignore other records.
ALIAS Points domain to another website (not an IP). Cannot already be an A or AAAA record on the bare domain @.
A Point domain to a static IPV4 address.

DNS Lookup

Cloudflare recommended 3rd party tools
Digital Ocean DNS Lookup

dig

Query for information on all DNS records

dig your_domain_name.com ANY

Query for A records

dig your_domain_name.com A

host, nslookup and dig share similar functionality.

Use the host dns lookup utility to lookup nameserver records

host -t ns example.com

whois

The ICANN registration data lookup tool gives you the ability to look up the current registration data for domain names

https://lookup.icann.org/en

Return information about a domain name registration, including the name servers it is configured to work with

whois your_domain_name.com

DNS Servers

Find DNS Servers used by your system (credit):

1. Show status for all devices i.e. network interfaces

nmcli device status

2. Show details for the device

nmcli device show the_interface_name

3. Look for rows which mention DNS

Also see this article on domain name resolution.