Documentation
DNS RESEARCH TOOL:  V2.1


System Requirements

  • Perl 5
  • NET:DNS Module
  • NET:SMTP Module
  • Telnet recommended
  • Sendmail
  • Superwhois or UPTODATE whois that fetches whois from modern INTERNIC

Preliminaries

  • Determine the path to PERL 5 on your web server host.  Note that some web hosting companies run both PERL 4 and PERL 5.  Make ABSOLUTELY sure you are not setting this up under PERL 4.  Ask your administrator if you are not sure.
  • Download the tarfile for this program and save it to your desktop.
  • Unpack the tar archive on your desktop using a program that unpacks UNIX TAR ARCHIVES. If you don't have such a program then download WINZIP FREE from SHAREWARE.COM
  • After you have unpacked the TAR archive you will have a collection of folders and files on your desktop.  Now you have to do some basic editing of each of these files (or at least some of them).  Use a text editor such as wordpad, notepad, BBEdit, simpletext, or teachtext to edit the files.  These are NOT WORD PROCESSOR DOCUMENTS they are just simple TEXT files so don't save them as word processor documents or save them with extentions such as .txt or they will NOT WORK.   Note that there may be a some files inside of folders which are "blank".   This is normal.
  • There are 2 .tar files included in the downloadable.  Upload both of these files as BINARY files to your server.  These are perl modules & libraries you NEED to get this script to work.  They can ONLY be installed by the system ROOT.  Some virtual servers allow you to install perl modules.  You can also run this on windows if you know what you are doing.  NOTE WE DO NOT PROVIDE WINDOWS BASED SUPPORT FOR FREE.
  • Make sure your whois engine is up to date by either installing our SUPERWHOIS script over your old whois engine or getting another upgrade so when you execute whois by telnet it can fetch domains from ANY modern registrar.

Preparing the CGI scripts

Define Path To PERL 5

The first step is to open up each and every file that has a .cgi extention and edit line number one of each script.  Each of the cgi scripts is written in perl 5. For your scripts to run they must know where perl 5 is installed on your web server. The path to perl 5 is defined to a cgi script in the first line of the file. In each of the cgi scripts the first line of code looks something like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

If the path to perl 5 on your web server is different from /usr/bin/perl you must edit the first line of each cgi script to reflect the correct path. If the path to perl 5 is the same no changes are necessary. If you do not know the path to perl 5 ask the webmaster or system administrator at your server site.  

Install perl modules

Upload the 2 module packages and install them.  If you don't know how to install perl modules see the tutorial section.

Configure the .cgi file

There is only one script to configure.   And only 2 variables.  Hopefully this is obvious.

  • $domainlist = "/path/to/domains.txt";
  • $openrelays = "/path/to/openrelays.txt";

Upload & CHMOD

  • Upload the cgi file and .txt files to your cgi-bin/mxplorer directory (create it).  Chmod the cgi file to 755 and the .txt files to 777.  Remove the blank line from openrelays.txt.

Run the script

The script will now read your list of domains, do some probing around and spit out the relays into the associated .txt file.   Run the script by telnet or SSH with the following command:

perl mxplorer.cgi

Ok, now this script was made PRIMARILY to show off the cool features of these 2 modules.  Not just as a stupid openrelay detector.  Play around with it and you will find out some REALLY cool uses for this code!

Have fun!