Red Green Repeat Adventures of a Spec Driven Junkie

Validating DNS Entries with dig

I describe a UNIX tool, called dig, that checks if DNS entries are propagating properly.

I walk through a situation where I need to make DNS CNAME entries to match on specified by a provider for an integration. When there were problems with DNS entries I made and the third party specification, I used dig to validate where was the mismatch.

To validate DNS entries and if the third party system isn’t giving detailed feedback, dig is the tool to get feedback yourself!

This article will take about six minutes to read.

Vincent van Gogh - A Peasant Woman Digging in Front of Her Cottage source and more information

Introduction

I was migrating to a new email provider for my newsletters and the provider has an integration for sending emails.

The requirement for the integration: specific DNS entries on my domain must match the values provided by the provider..

Easy-peasy, right?

Problem

Well, I spent more than two minutes and I was still stuck. I just had to copy-paste entries from the provider to my hosting service’s DNS entry. The email provider had a verification button on the site to validate configuration.

Every time I pressed the verification button, the response was:

DNS Entry Not Configured

WHAT THE?!

I am copy-pasting the exact entry! What is wrong?! I triple checked the entry. It matches!!!

I know with DNS entries, there’s a TTL, time-to-live, for the changes to propagate on the Internet. The Internet is a marvelous and complex piece of machinery. Maybe the DNS entries will work after an hour (the TTL value). I will step away for a bit and let the Internet do its thing.

An hour later…

Well, I waited longer than the TTL (one hour) and the DNS change should have propagated across the whole Internet.

I press the verification button on the email provider’s site and the response is:

DNS Entry Not Configured

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!

OK, there’s something else missing or I’m missing something. I need to find out what’s really going on.

I need a tool to look up DNS entries to find out if I’m wrong or my hostname provider is wrong or the email provider is wrong or whatever.

Enter: dig the “domain information groper”

There are tools on the web that can look up DNS entries for you, which I started with.

I dig a bit further and find dig, domain information groper, a local UNIX tool to validate DNS entries to be the best. (Yes, pun intended ;-))

To check the DNS entry for a hostname, run the dig command as:

dig <hostname>

Let’s go through what a misconfigured CNAME DNS entry would return and compare that to a properly configured CNAME DNS entry would be.

Misconfigured DNS CNAME

Normally, one would start with a working example and see what’s wrong. In my case, the email host’s tool was telling me the DNS entry was invalid.

Let’s start with: what does a misconfigured CNAME entry look like?

Using dig to lookup a DNS entry for one that does not have a CNAME entry: em5478.redgreenrepeat.com

vagrant@ubuntu-xenial:~$ dig em5478.redgreenrepeat.com

; <<>> DiG 9.10.3-P4-Ubuntu <<>> em5478.redgreenrepeat.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 3255
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;em5478.redgreenrepeat.com.     IN      A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
redgreenrepeat.com.     3600    IN      SOA     ns37.domaincontrol.com. dns.jomax.net. 2020080115 28800 7200 604800 600

;; Query time: 29 msec
;; SERVER: 10.0.2.3#53(10.0.2.3)
;; WHEN: Thu Aug 20 09:14:29 EDT 2020
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 122

The easiest way to tell the DNS CNAME is not configured is seeing there is no ANSWER SECTION. It’s not immediately obvious because that section does not appear at all.

To know if a DNS CNAME entry is valid, we require “insider knowledge” of a valid CNAME entry.

Let’s look at a valid CNAME DNS entry.

Properly Configured DNS CNAME entry

We need a valid DNS CNAME entry to see dig results to validate whether another entry is invalid.

Let’s see what the dig result is for: https://www.redgreenrepeat.com, which definitely works.

vagrant@ubuntu-xenial:~$ dig www.redgreenrepeat.com

; <<>> DiG 9.10.3-P4-Ubuntu <<>> www.redgreenrepeat.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 46368
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 5, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.redgreenrepeat.com.                IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.redgreenrepeat.com. 3600    IN      CNAME   redgreenrepeat.github.io.
redgreenrepeat.github.io. 3600  IN      A       185.199.108.153
redgreenrepeat.github.io. 3600  IN      A       185.199.109.153
redgreenrepeat.github.io. 3600  IN      A       185.199.110.153
redgreenrepeat.github.io. 3600  IN      A       185.199.111.153

;; Query time: 25 msec
;; SERVER: 10.0.2.3#53(10.0.2.3)
;; WHEN: Thu Aug 20 09:17:10 EDT 2020
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 153

Just to highlight the ANSWER SECTION, which is here now and not in the misconfigured DNS CNAME entry in the previous section in the response as it contains:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.redgreenrepeat.com. 3600    IN      CNAME   redgreenrepeat.github.io.
redgreenrepeat.github.io. 3600  IN      A       185.199.108.153
redgreenrepeat.github.io. 3600  IN      A       185.199.109.153
redgreenrepeat.github.io. 3600  IN      A       185.199.110.153
redgreenrepeat.github.io. 3600  IN      A       185.199.111.153

and the first line:

www.redgreenrepeat.com. 3600    IN      CNAME   redgreenrepeat.github.io.

Is the CNAME entry, which is saying www.redgreenrepeat.com points to: redgreenrepeat.github.io. (Yes, this is how this whole website operates.)

Solving the Original Problem

With this information, I found out the problem: copy and pasting the whole entry is not what the email provider needs as the DNS CNAME entry.

The email provider said to copy and make this entry:

em5477.redgreenrepeat.com

The website’s copy button copied the whole line.

I pasted that as a CNAME DNS entry into my hostname DNS.

Well, my hostname DNS provider would take: CNAME em5477.redgreenrepeat.com and map it as:

em5477.redgreenrepeat.com.redgreenrepeat.com

Checking the em5477.redgreenrepeat.com.redgreenrepeat.com value using dig:

vagrant@ubuntu-xenial:~$ dig em5477.redgreenrepeat.com.redgreenrepeat.com

; <<>> DiG 9.10.3-P4-Ubuntu <<>> em5477.redgreenrepeat.com.redgreenrepeat.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 35419
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;em5477.redgreenrepeat.com.     IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
em5477.redgreenrepeat.com.redgreenrepeat.com. 3600 IN      CNAME   u17683584.wl085.sendgrid.net.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
wl085.sendgrid.net.     3600    IN      SOA     aisha.ns.cloudflare.com. dns.cloudflare.com. 2034959526 10000 2400 604800 3600

;; Query time: 50 msec
;; SERVER: 10.0.2.3#53(10.0.2.3)
;; WHEN: Thu Aug 20 09:12:49 EDT 2020
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 156

(facepalm)

Things were working on the hostname side, it’s just that the email provider expects: em5477.redgreenrepeat.com

Let’s make that DNS CNAME entry, em5477, and see the result:

vagrant@ubuntu-xenial:~$ dig em5477.redgreenrepeat.com

; <<>> DiG 9.10.3-P4-Ubuntu <<>> em5477.redgreenrepeat.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 35419
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;em5477.redgreenrepeat.com.     IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
em5477.redgreenrepeat.com. 3600 IN      CNAME   u17683584.wl085.sendgrid.net.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
wl085.sendgrid.net.     3600    IN      SOA     aisha.ns.cloudflare.com. dns.cloudflare.com. 2034959526 10000 2400 604800 3600

;; Query time: 50 msec
;; SERVER: 10.0.2.3#53(10.0.2.3)
;; WHEN: Thu Aug 20 09:12:49 EDT 2020
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 156

There’s an ANSWER SECTION and it contains:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
em5477.redgreenrepeat.com. 3600 IN      CNAME   u17683584.wl085.sendgrid.net.

NOW when I push the “verify” button on my email provider it says:

CONFIGURED

Yes.

Conclusion

Networking is hard. It’s one aspect of the Internet that intimidates me as getting configurations wrong just doesn’t yield any result, at least from the tools I know.

This is where it’s important to find the right tools in the domain. dig is on every UNIX system, yet this is the first time I had to use it to solve an actual problem.

Without dig, I may never would have figured out this configuration mismatch.

Thank You dig!