python: how to tell socket.gethostbyaddr() which dns server to use

Question

is there any way to specify dns server should be used by socket.gethostbyaddr()?

Answer 1

Please correct me, if I'm wrong, but isn't this operating system's responsibility? gethostbyaddr is just a part of libc and according to man:

     The gethostbyname(), gethostbyname2() and gethostbyaddr() functions each return a
     pointer to an object with the following structure describing an internet host refer-
     enced by name or by address, respectively.  This structure contains either the infor-
     mation obtained from the name server, named(8), or broken-out fields from a line in
     /etc/hosts.  If the local name server is not running these routines do a lookup in
     /etc/hosts.

So I would say there's no way of simply telling Python (from the code's point of view) to use a particular DNS, since it's part of system's configuration.

Answer 2

Take a look at PyDNS.