Introducing the named-rrchecker tool

The named-rrchecker tool (introduced in BIND 9.10) can be used to verify the syntactic correctness of individual resource records, or to convert them into a canonical format so that a newly defined record type can be loaded into an older name server that doesn't recognize it.

The tool itself reads one DNS resource record (without an owner name) from standard input and checks to see if its syntax is correct. If the syntax is incorrect, it prints an error message and exits with an exit code of 1 (failure). If the syntax is correct, and none of its "print" options have been invoked, then it is silent and exits with an exit code of 0 (success). It is intended for use inside shell scripts that use those exit codes to control their iteration.

Options available are:

-h        Print a help menu and exit
-o origin Specify an origin to be used when interpreting the record;
          this provides the same information as the $ORIGIN statement
          in a text zone file
-p        Print out the resulting record in canonical form
-u        Print out the resulting record in unknown record form
-C        Print known classes mnemonic
-T        Print known standard types mnemonic
-P        Print known private types mnemonic