TITLE:		Installing dig, nslookup and host
LFS VERSION:	3.3 -/+
AUTHOR:		Jim Harris <jim_harris@maxtor.com>

SYNOPSIS:
	How to install the dig, nslookup and host utilities.

HINT:
Version 0.1
14-JUN-2002

Introduction
------------------------------

This hint explains how to install the dig (domain information groper), nslookup 
and host utilities from ISC BIND version 9 without installing the rest of the 
package (a full DNS server.)  If you prefer to setup a complete DNS server, 
please see the BIND hint available at 
http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/bind.txt.

This hint assumes that you already have a valid DNS server to use and a valid 
network connection.

Be aware that many, or all, of these utilities are also available under the 4.x 
and 8.x versions of BIND, however, this installation process will only work 
with BIND version 9.x due to major changes in the installation process from 
prior releases of BIND.

Where to get BIND
------------------------------

For this hint, BIND version 9.2.1 was used, but any version in the 9.x family 
will most likely work.

The source for BIND can be obtained from:
	ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/bind9/9.2.1/bind-9.2.1.tar.gz

Building and Installing
------------------------------

Because we are only installing the dig, nslookup and host utilities, we can 
save time by building only the libraries required by these binaries, thus, the 
steps taken to build and install will vary slightly from a standard configure / 
make / make install process.

$ tar xvfz bind-9.2.1.tar.gz
$ cd bind-9.2.1
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr

	* A note on FHS compliance.  I have changed the default installation 
location from /usr/local to /usr.  Many people would argue that this is not FHS 
compliant because it is an optional package, however, I feel that these three 
utilities are a critical part of any GNU/Linux installation.  If you feel 
differently, you can optionally run ./configure without the --prefix argument 
to install these utilities to their default locations under /usr/local.

$ make -C lib/dns &&
  make -C lib/isc &&
  cd bin/dig &&
  make &&
  make install

Configuration
------------------------------

All three utilities try to use the name servers and search paths found in 
/etc/resolv.conf unless you tell them to do otherwise at invocation.  If you do 
not have a valid resolv.conf, dig and host may appear to hang.

An example of a minimum /etc/resolv.conf:

search <domain suffix of ISP>
nameserver <ip of dns server>
nameserver <ip of secondary dns server>