How do I find the authoritative name-server for a domain name?

Question

How can I find the origins of conflicting DNS records?

Answer 1

The term you should be googling is "authoritative," not "definitive".

On Linux or Mac you can use the commands whois, dig, host, nslookup or several others. nslookup might also work on Windows.

An example:

$ whois stackoverflow.com
[...]
   Domain servers in listed order:
      NS51.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
      NS52.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

As for the extra credit: Yes, it is possible.

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aryeh is definitely wrong, as his suggestion usually will only give you the IP address for the hostname. If you use dig, you have to look for NS records, like so:

dig ns stackoverflow.com

Keep in mind that this may ask your local DNS server and thus may give wrong or out-of-date answers that it has in its cache.