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installing nslint - debug your DNS 27 July 1998

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see also dnswalk.

As part of the continuing Getting local names to resolve problem, I decided to install nslint at the advice of a helper on on the FreeBSD Questions mailing list. Here's what I've done so far:

26 July 1998

I checked my 2.2.5 CDs for nslint but it wasn't there. So I went to ftp.freebsd.org and checked out the cd /pub/FreeBSD/ports/net/ and looked for nslint. I found a directory, but that's not what I need. I wanted a .tar file. I remembered it was somewhere else. I went back up the tree and found distfiles. That's where I found nslint-2.0a5.tar.Z. I retrieved it from the FTP server it and then continued as below.

gunzip nslint-2.0a5.tar.Z

tar -xvf nslint-2.0a5.tar

cd nslint-2.0a5

make install

Well, that didn't work. And there's no instructions. So I posted a message to the mailing list.

27 July 1998

A reply on the mailing list suggests I try a package instead. So I grabbed nslint-2.0a4.tgz from ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/packages/net. Then I do the following:

bash# pwd /usr/packages bash# pkg_add nslint-2.0a4.tgz tar: Could not create file bin/nslint : Is it a directory missing: ./share/nls/sl_SI.ISO_8859-2 (created) bash#

Well, that doesn't make *any* sense to me. Ahh well.

Out of desperation, I type nslint. I get: bash: nslint: is a directory. Hmmm. Where is that directory? I ask on Undernet #freebsd. Well, I asked, but I found it anyways. It was in /usr/local/bin. I delete that directory and try the package install again. Now I get:

pkg_add: package 'nslint-2.0a4' already recorded as installed

Bummer. How do unrecord that install? Ahhh, I'll check the pkg_add man pages. There I found the following bit of information:

10. After installation is complete, a copy of the packing list,
deinstall script, description, and display files are copied into
/var/db/pkg/_pkg-name_ for subsequent possible use by pkg_delete(1).
Any package dependencies are recorded in the other packages'
/var/db/pkg/_other-pkg_/+REQUIRED_BY file (if the environment vari
able PKG_DBDIR is set, this overrides the /var/db/pkg/ path shown
above).

You beauty!

So I ran pkg_delete nslint-2.0a4. And received the following messages:

pkg_delete: file '/usr/local/bin/.nslint' doesn't really exist pkg_delete: couldn't entirely delete package (perhaps the packing list is incorrectly specified?)

But that's OK because it never really installed.

Then I ran the original command again: pkg_add nslint-2.0a4.tgz

This time, it worked. I entered the command nslint:

/usr/libexe/ld.so: warning: /usr/lib/libc.so.3.0: minor version 0 older than expected 1, using it anyway.

Well, this *is* progress!

My next step will be to figure out how to run nslint and use it to debug my DNS, which seems to be running pretty good after my latest round of help.

1 September 1998

Today I installed nslint from the 2.2.7 CDs. I did a make, then a make install. It ran first time. This is an example of why I like the ports. They almost-without-fail work first-time-every-time.

The following command will check my name server files:

nslint -b /etc/namedb/named.boot

It did detect a couple of problems, and I fixed them up straight away. If you get any error messages, try the manual pages for interpretation details (man nslint).

2 September 1998

Today I received a reply to a message I posted to nslint@ee.lbl.gov back on 27 July 1998. It said run ./configure which will create a makefile. I vaguely recall receiving this advice from another source and definitely remember running it.

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