NSVI(1)

💖 NSVI — the zone-editing bestie you didn't know you needed 💖

okay so this is nsvi, from the Perl user-contributed manual pages, section 1. sit down, grab a boba, we're doing DNS 💅

---

✨ NAME ✨

nsvi — transfer a zone, edit it, then upload the edits 🦋

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

nsvi [-01cCdDghvV] [-k keyfile] [-y [hmac:]name:key]
     [-S mode|num] [-s server] <zone>

---

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

so here's the whole vibe, bestie: nsvi fires off an AXFR request for the zone, then it opens up your editor so you can change literally whatever you want, and then it runs nsdiff | nsupdate to yeet those changes over to the server. no cap, that's the entire pipeline 🔥

and here's the part that's giving main character energy: all the automatically-maintained DNSSEC records get stripped out of the zone before it ever reaches your editor 👑 so you're not sitting there hand-editing stuff nobody should be touching. also you do not need to manually adjust the SOA serial number — it handles that, periodt ✨

---

💅 OPTIONS 💅

most of the nsvi options get passed along to nsdiff, and a few of them go to nsupdate. it's giving delegation 🎀

• -h — show you this documentation. hey, that's what you're reading rn 😭
• -V — show version info ⭐
• -v — verbose mode. she talks more 🗣️
• -n — interactive confirmation 🫶

so when you quit out of your editor, you'll get shown the changes, and then you get asked what's up: press U or Y to actually make the update, press E or R to go edit again, or press literally any other key to quit 🙈

• -01cCdD
• -S mode|num

these ones get handed straight to nsdiff. for the deets, go read the nsdiff manual, iykyk 📖

• -s server[#port] — transfer the zone from the server you name in this option, and send the update request to that same place 📬 you can give a server host name or an IP address, optionally followed by a # and the port number.

and if you don't use the -s option? the zone gets transferred from localhost, and nsvi will use nsupdate -l to update the zone. lowkey the default route 💫

• -g — passed to nsupdate so it uses GSS-TSIG for UPDATE 🔐
• -k keyfile — a TSIG key file, passed to dig, nsdiff, and nsupdate. everybody's getting one 🎁
• -y [hmac:]name:key — a literal TSIG key, also passed to dig, nsdiff, and nsupdate 🗝️

---

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• TMPDIR — where the temporary files live 🏠
• VISUAL, EDITOR — which editor to use. $VISUAL wins if it's set, otherwise $EDITOR, otherwise it's vi. a whole hierarchy, obsessed 😌

---

👑 VERSION 👑

this is nsvi-1.85 — <https://dotat.at/prog/nsdiff/> ⭐

written by Tony Finch <fanf2@cam.ac.uk> <dot@dotat.at> at Cambridge University Information Services. and the license tea: you may do anything with this. it has no warranty. do whatever, but nobody's got you if it breaks, fr fr 💀

---

🫶 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 🫶

big love to Tristan Le Guern for the -n option and Mantas Mikulėnas for the -g option 🎀 and shoutout to David McBride and Petr Menšík for the useful feedback, we appreciate y'all 💖

---

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

nsdiff(1), nsupdate(1), dig(1) 🌸

---

and that's the whole page, bestie 💜 this was perl v5.42.0, dated 2025-07-24 — go forth and edit your zones responsibly, slay ✨🎀💅