toluol

toluol is a command line tool for making DNS queries intended to replace dig. It can be used for all sort of DNS queries, including:

• Regular DNS queries
• Queries for DNSSEC records with the +do flag
• DNS over TLS (DoT) with the dot/+tls flag
• DNS over HTTPS (DoH) with the +doh/+https flag
• DNS over HTTP (DoH but without TLS, great for locally debugging DoH) with the +http flag
• Reverse lookups with the -x option

Other useful features include:

• short, readable output by default — verbose output by choice
• IPv6 by default
• script friendly options:
  • JSON output (e.g. for use with jq(1), see examples below)
  • unpadded output (e.g. for use with cut(1), see examples below)

This repository consists of a library crate for creating, encoding and parsing DNS messages and a binary crate for making DNS queries from the command-line.

For example usage of most of the library capabilities have a look at the code of the binary (src/main.rs).

Installation

Arch Linux (AUR)

yay -S toluol

Via cargo install

cargo install toluol

Shoutout to cargo-update — after installing toluol as above, you can update it via cargo install-update toluol, if you have cargo-update installed (or run cargo install-update -a to update all packages installed via cargo install).

Examples

AAAA query:

# the query type is not case-sensitive and order of the arguments does not matter, so `toluol example.com aaaa` would also work
# also, AAAA is the default query type, so in this case just `toluol example.com` would work as well
$ toluol AAAA example.com
example.com.  30283  AAAA  2606:2800:220:1:248:1893:25c8:1946

response from ordns.he.net:53 in 23 ms

DNS over TLS (DoT) query with sepcified nameserver:

# or `toluol @dns.google AAAA example.com +tls`
$ toluol @dns.google AAAA example.com +dot
example.com.  86400  AAAA  2606:2800:220:1:248:1893:25c8:1946

response from dns.google:853 in 35 ms

Query with DNSSEC records:

$ toluol AAAA example.com +do
example.com.  26860  AAAA   2606:2800:220:1:248:1893:25c8:1946
example.com.  26860  RRSIG  AAAA 8 2 86400 20220309052808 20220216115840 1618 example.com. JlODulmkXKTi5EvxUJDcVh2pDZY8CovFWykPS9HhjbicMQJyCsngkHeRWVzndGU9nTYKiBGRJY2cMPzV5S4Lxh3AojM42xsuT0kQh7dDWOgfuZEeaLbSsZgLA1Xy2WnrxHlHv965cOMDcylqXHi7WEgBhiFTBMP6w6R5vgKxp5w=

response from ordns.he.net:53 in 15 ms

Verbose output:

$ toluol AAAA example.com
Header:
        id: 57320, opcode: QUERY, rcode: NOERROR, flags: rd ra ad cd

OPT Pseudosection:
        EDNS: Version 0, flags: <none>; payload size: 512

Question Section:
        example.com.         AAAA

Answer Section:
        example.com.  28653  AAAA  2606:2800:220:1:248:1893:25c8:1946

Query metadata:
        Time:        15 ms
        Reply size:  68 bytes
        Server:      ordns.he.net:53

Reverse query:

$ toluol -x 2001:470:20::2
2.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.2.0.0.0.7.4.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa.  86400  PTR  ordns.he.net.

response from ordns.he.net:53 in 141 ms

Only print RDATA using cut(1):

$ toluol MX gmail.com +no-padding +no-meta | cut -d' ' -f4-
10 alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
5 gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
40 alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
30 alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
20 alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.

Only print RDATA as JSON array using jq(1):

$ toluol MX gmail.com +json | jq '[.[] | .rdata]'
[
  [
    "10",
    "alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com."
  ],
  [
    "5",
    "gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com."
  ],
  [
    "40",
    "alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com."
  ],
  [
    "30",
    "alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com."
  ],
  [
    "20",
    "alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com."
  ]
]

Useful resources

• RFC 1035 (original specification of the DNS protocol)
• Explanation of the DNS specification
• Overview of the DNS record types
• Overview of some DNS parameters

License

See LICENSE.txt.

Copyright (c) 2022 Max von Forell