CODEWITHSUNDEEP
unix
Mohan
Mohan

Reputation: 155

UNIX server alias

Is there a way to check the list of aliases a particular UNIX host has?.

When I use WinSCP kind of a tool to login to list of UNIX servers the contents are one and the same.

How I verify/obtain the list of servers that are aliases to each other using a UNIX command line.

Waiting for help/inputs !

Thanks, Mohan

Upvotes: 0

Views: 4776

Answers (1)

JonathanPatschke
JonathanPatschke

Reputation: 154

The short answer is that there's no definitive way to do this. Literally anyone running a DNS server anywhere can provide an alias for your server without telling you about it (in fact, I do this at home for systems at work to make the VPN more convenient for me). The underlying problem is that there is a mapping from the aliases to the server, but no mapping in reverse.

Some sites document server aliases in /etc/hosts, but that's more convention than requirement, since it involves duplicating information that's already in DNS, anyway.

Now, for just the servers you care/know about, you can use the nslookup or host command. The first line of output from host will tell you if the name refers to a server directly, or if it refers to an alias. Just give 'host' each of the names you're interested in, and you'll eventually build up a useful map of the names on the network.

Upvotes: 1

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