[Techtalk] testing dns change

[James Sutherland]

On 26 Sep 2012, at 20:38, Carla Schroder <carla at bratgrrl.com> wrote:

> 
> hiho,
> 
> When I migrate a Web site to a different Web host, how do I know which
> server my Web browser is hitting? It's a shared IP address, so I can't
> test it by entering the IP address in my browser.
> http://www.whatsmydns.net/ is wonderful for tracking DNS propagation,
> but I still don't know which server my Web browser is hitting. 

Ping will use the same DNS settings and cache as your browser, so a
simple "ping www.example.com" will tell you which IP address your
system thinks www.example.com belongs on at the moment:

$ ping www.google.com
PING www.google.com (173.194.65.147) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from ee-in-f147.1e100.net (173.194.65.147): icmp_req=1 ttl=49 time=4.25 ms

If you want to *control* which server the browser hits, put an entry for
that server in /etc/hosts (IP address, white space, hostname). That way,
you can test your new site is properly deployed before you make the
DNS change, just in case anything's gone wrong!


James.