I needed to find out if an organization was using GSuite for their emails, so I can allow their users to login to a JupyterHub I was setting up. I use Google Auth in other places, so I wanted to find out if this organization was using GSuite.

I could’ve just asked them, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, you can use dig to find out!

For example, if I were to test berkeley.edu, I can run:

$ dig -t mx berkeley.edu

This gives me a bunch of output, the important bits of which are:

;; ANSWER SECTION:
berkeley.edu.		242	IN	MX	5 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.
berkeley.edu.		242	IN	MX	10 alt3.aspmx.l.google.com.
berkeley.edu.		242	IN	MX	10 alt4.aspmx.l.google.com.
berkeley.edu.		242	IN	MX	1 aspmx.l.google.com.
berkeley.edu.		242	IN	MX	5 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.

This means that mail to anyone@berkeley.edu is routed via Google, so I know this organization is using GSuite for their users!