Overview
This article explains how to check where your domain's nameservers and A records are hosted.
View the DreamHost DNS overview article for further information on website DNS and how these records are used with your website.
Using online tools to check DNS
There are many websites available for you to check your DNS. For example.
General DNS record lookups
These tools check where your DNS is currently pointing.
- Centralops.net – Various DNS tests
- Network-tools.com – Various DNS tests
- Multiple record lookup – Easily specify from a range of records you wish to lookup
- Nameserver lookup – Used to check details of nameserver records
DNS propagation tests
If you just updated your DNS, you can use the following links to check what locations it has updated online:
- whatsmydns.net — A popular site that checks DNS records around the world.
- Viewing your DreamHost DNS records — Use DreamHost's DNS propagation checker in the panel.
Checking DNS via SSH
The following lists several commands you can run via SSH to check your site's DNS.
To run these commands, make sure you have Created a Shell user and are able to log into your server via SSH.
Checking nameservers
This command checks where your site's nameservers are currently hosted. The +short option simplifies the output so you only see the nameservers without additional information.
[server]$ dig ns example.com +short ns2.dreamhost.com. ns1.dreamhost.com. ns3.dreamhost.com.
Checking A records
This checks where the A records (IP addresses) of your site are hosted.
[server]$ dig example.com +short 173.236.241.46 [server]$ dig www.example.com +short 173.236.241.46
You can then run the host command to check where that IP is hosted from.
[server]$ host 173.236.241.46 46.214.236.173.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer apache2-argon.iad1-shared-b8-16.dreamhost.com.
The output of this is backwards. For example, all the way to the right shows that the IP is hosted at dreamhost.com.
To the left is the server name at DreamHost. This shows it's hosted on the DreamHost server named iad1-shared-b8-16.
To the left of that is the specific apache instance the site is on called apache2-argon.