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From: dwells@fits.cx.nrao.edu (Don Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.archives
Subject: [comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains] Re: How to create /etc/hosts from zone
Message-ID: <1990Nov17.061856.25568@ox.com>
Date: 17 Nov 90 06:18:56 GMT
References: <652@janus.Quotron.com> <19523@oolong.la.locus.com> <DWELLS.90Nov15174438@fits.cx.nrao.edu>
Sender: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Reply-To: dwells@fits.cx.nrao.edu (Don Wells)
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Archive-name: gethosts/15-Nov-90
Original-posting-by: dwells@fits.cx.nrao.edu (Don Wells)
Original-subject: Re: How to create /etc/hosts from zone
Archive-site: fits.cx.nrao.edu [192.33.115.8]
Archive-directory: /pub/src
Reposted-by: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)

In article <1667@devildog.att.com> jrallen@devildog.att.com (Jon Allen) writes:
   References: <652@janus.Quotron.com> <19523@oolong.la.locus.com>
 It would be a work saver if I
   could just update the DNS files and generate an appropriate /etc/hosts
   for the dumb machines.

I have constructed a tool that I call "gethosts" that can generate a
hosts file from queries to the DNS for a domain. It has a variety of
options, such as recursively descending a tree of subdomain servers,
or appending the HINFO data to the lines in the hosts table, or
inserting comments derived from "whois" queries to the NIC regarding
the domain, and it even dumps inverse-address domains. Much of this
capability makes gethosts useful for producing nicely formatted dumps
of zones or trees of zones when one is exploring the Internet.  The
code is a big (20_KB) Bourne shell script which contains an awk
program which invokes nslookup in subprocesses and analyzes the
output. I run it with GNU awk (gawk). It is not fast (I often do
"gethosts domain.edu >hosts.domain.edu &" to run it in the
background), and it has some bugs, but I frequently find it useful.
You can get the code via anonFTP:

	fits.cx.nrao.edu:/pub/src/gethosts.tar.Z	[14.8_KB]
	[192.33.115.8]
--

Donald C. Wells, Assoc. Scientist  |        dwells@nrao.edu
Nat. Radio Astronomy Observatory   |         6654::DWELLS
Edgemont Road                      | +1-804-296-0277      38:02.2N
Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA | +1-804-296-0278(Fax) 78:31.1W