Monitoring DNS server with lookupname

[Steve101_hyperi]

Hi,
I'm trying to monitor a DNS server and in particular a specific lookupname

I've added a new platform service and it is talking to my DNS server ok.

I understand that I need a match property to verify that the lookupname is available, however I don't know what my match property gets applied to.
Am I looking for the lookupname in the response? Or am I looking for a specific token in the response? etc etc

Ultimately I want to generate an alert if a particular DNS address is unavailable.

I've looked through the docs & forum, but can't seem to find any info.
Any help would be appreciated

Regards
Steve

[jvalkeal_hyperi]

Pattern is a value you expect to found from dns lookup answer. Record type (A,ANY,CNAME,MX,NS,TXT) is the querytype. What those types actually means, check this wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DNS_record_types

Remember that some query types are mostly related to domain names, not host names.

And here's examples against google

$ nslookup -querytype=A www.google.com
Server: 10.11.0.5
Address: 10.11.0.5#53

Non-authoritative answer:
www.google.com canonical name = www.l.google.com.
Name: www.l.google.com
Address: 209.85.135.99
Name: www.l.google.com
Address: 209.85.135.103
Name: www.l.google.com
Address: 209.85.135.104
Name: www.l.google.com
Address: 209.85.135.147
---------------------------------------------------------
$ nslookup -querytype=ANY www.google.com
Server: 10.11.0.5
Address: 10.11.0.5#53

Non-authoritative answer:
www.google.com canonical name = www.l.google.com.

Authoritative answers can be found from:
www.l.google.com internet address = 209.85.135.103
www.l.google.com internet address = 209.85.135.104
www.l.google.com internet address = 209.85.135.147
www.l.google.com internet address = 209.85.135.99

---------------------------------------------------------
$ nslookup -querytype=CNAME google.com
Server: 10.11.0.5
Address: 10.11.0.5#53

Non-authoritative answer:
*** Can't find google.com: No answer

Authoritative answers can be found from:
google.com
origin = ns1.google.com
mail addr = dns-admin.google.com
serial = 2009011501
refresh = 7200
retry = 1800
expire = 1209600
minimum = 300

---------------------------------------------------------
$ nslookup -querytype=MX google.com
Server: 10.11.0.5
Address: 10.11.0.5#53

Non-authoritative answer:
google.com mail exchanger = 10 smtp2.google.com.
google.com mail exchanger = 10 smtp3.google.com.
google.com mail exchanger = 10 smtp4.google.com.
google.com mail exchanger = 10 smtp1.google.com.

Authoritative answers can be found from:
smtp2.google.com internet address = 64.233.165.25
smtp3.google.com internet address = 64.233.183.25
smtp4.google.com internet address = 72.14.221.25
smtp1.google.com internet address = 209.85.237.25

---------------------------------------------------------
$ nslookup -querytype=NS google.com
Server: 10.11.0.5
Address: 10.11.0.5#53

Non-authoritative answer:
google.com nameserver = ns2.google.com.
google.com nameserver = ns3.google.com.
google.com nameserver = ns4.google.com.
google.com nameserver = ns1.google.com.

Authoritative answers can be found from:
ns2.google.com internet address = 216.239.34.10
ns3.google.com internet address = 216.239.36.10
ns4.google.com internet address = 216.239.38.10
ns1.google.com internet address = 216.239.32.10


---------------------------------------------------------
$ nslookup -querytype=TXT www.google.com
Server: 10.11.0.5
Address: 10.11.0.5#53

Non-authoritative answer:
www.google.com canonical name = www.l.google.com.

Authoritative answers can be found from:
l.google.com
origin = g.l.google.com
mail addr = dns-admin.google.com
serial = 1369708
refresh = 900
retry = 900
expire = 1800
minimum = 60


--------

Just pick your choice. Not sure what you actually want to check.

[Steve101_hyperi]

Thanks for your help.

I want to check that a local DNS entry is actually resolvable.

i.e. Testserver = 192.168.0.45
I'd like Hyperic to periodically check that testserver resolves to 192.168.0.45

So I've set the record type to A, as this returns the address only

I take it that I need to write regex to parse the output of nslookup? Is that what Hyperic uses internally?

Thanks again

[excowboy]

Hi,

so if you just set the option field pattern to 192.168.0.45 you should be fine.

Cheers,
Mirko

[excowboy]

Hi,

so if you just set the option field pattern to 192.168.0.45 you should be fine.

Cheers,
Mirko

[Steve101_hyperi]

Hi,

I've added the IP address into the pattern field, but the service availability is still reporting at the warning level.

I've checked that the name is still resolvable, and that the address is being returned by nslookup.

Any ideas what could be wrong?

Thanks again for your help