Solaris

nslookup is not available in standard solaris installation, you can of course install it additionally but it is not recommended to use because standard and builtin tool in solaris is "getent".

usage :
-------
getent passwd root
getent hosts google.com
getent <database> <argument>

"getent" is better tool then nslookup cause it first consults /etc/nsswitch.conf file and checks the order in which it should process certain database request (e.g. hosts, passwd ...)

So if you set hosts in /etc/nsswitch.conf to "files dns", then getent will first consult /etc/inet/hosts file to find some host to ip matching there and then dns server in /etc/resolv.conf.

Check /etc/inet/hosts file and order of processing in /etc/nsswitch.conf.

This part of your reply is incorrect. "nslookup" has always been part of core Solaris. "getent" exists too but serve a different while similar purpose.

sorry ma fault.
I meant thast this is not recommended tool for quering dns server.
getent is recommended.

After some further research, it doesn't appear likely that a machine as old as these Netra X1's is likely to be able to boot from USB. I may still try it if I can figure out how to boot from USB (as well as trying to temporarily attach an IDE CD drive), but in the meantime I've been checking on how to do network installs as well.

I have a second Netra as well (accessible only by SSH unlike the first one) that I was going to try to use as the network install/boot server, but it appears to have insufficient available disk space. So my new question is whether or not there would be any obvious problems with me creating an x86 virtual machine (since VMware cannot create SPARC virtual machines), installing the x86 version of Solaris on it, and using this as the network install/boot server in a network installation of Solaris on the Netra X1 (SPARC) system. Unfortunately the app we are installing cannot run on the x86 version of Solaris for whatever reason, but would it affect a system from which another SUN was attempting to network boot?

Have a look at the answer to question 1: BigAdmin: Xpert Session - Solaris 10 OS Installation
They recommend external SCSI CDROM/DVD drive. You can pick such drives up quite cheap on Ebay and elsewhere.

Sorry to harass you
The recommended tool to query DNS server(s) used to be nslookup and is now dig.
The recommended tool to query tables according to the name service switch configuration is getent.