How can I find the authoritative DNS server for a domain using dnspython?

Question

As part of a tool I'm writing I want to have a diagnostic that will tell the user whether they have configured their domain's DNS correctly for a particular service. I want to query the authoritative DNS server for their domain so that I can bypass any cached results.

Answer 1

Here's my attempt at this. It uses the system's standard DNS server for looking up the root server for the top-level domain and for resolving the names of the various DNS servers along the chain, which I think is appropriate because those names would presumably change very infrequently.

import dns
import dns.name
import dns.query
import dns.resolver

def get_authoritative_nameserver(domain, log=lambda msg: None):
    n = dns.name.from_text(domain)

    depth = 2
    default = dns.resolver.get_default_resolver()
    nameserver = default.nameservers[0]

    last = False
    while not last:
        s = n.split(depth)

        last = s[0].to_unicode() == u'@'
        sub = s[1]

        log('Looking up %s on %s' % (sub, nameserver))
        query = dns.message.make_query(sub, dns.rdatatype.NS)
        response = dns.query.udp(query, nameserver)

        rcode = response.rcode()
        if rcode != dns.rcode.NOERROR:
            if rcode == dns.rcode.NXDOMAIN:
                raise Exception('%s does not exist.' % sub)
            else:
                raise Exception('Error %s' % dns.rcode.to_text(rcode))

        rrset = None
        if len(response.authority) > 0:
            rrset = response.authority[0]
        else:
            rrset = response.answer[0]

        rr = rrset[0]
        if rr.rdtype == dns.rdatatype.SOA:
            log('Same server is authoritative for %s' % sub)
        else:
            authority = rr.target
            log('%s is authoritative for %s' % (authority, sub))
            nameserver = default.query(authority).rrset[0].to_text()

        depth += 1

    return nameserver


import sys

def log(msg):
    print msg

print get_authoritative_nameserver(sys.argv[1], log)

Here's some sample output:

Looking up com. on 192.168.255.10
l.gtld-servers.net. is authoritative for com.
Looking up stackoverflow.com. on 192.41.162.30
ns1.p19.dynect.net. is authoritative for stackoverflow.com.
Looking up meta.stackoverflow.com. on 208.78.70.19
Same server is authoritative for meta.stackoverflow.com.
208.78.70.19