Subprocess puzzle and two questions

[Roy Smith]

I wrote:
>> Oh, my.  You're using DNS as a replacement for ping?  Fair enough.  In
>> that case, all you really care about is that you can connect to port 53
>> on the server...
>>
>> s = socket.socket()
>> s.connect(('8.8.8.8', 53))

In article <mailman.3684.1352904008.27098.python-list at python.org>,
Chris Angelico  <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>That assumes that (a) the remote server supports TCP for DNS

This is true.  I honestly don't know what percentage of DNS servers
out there only support UDP.  The two I tried (Google's 8.8.8.8, and my
Apple TimeCapsule) both supported TCP, but that's hardly a
representitive sample.

> and (b) that connection time for TCP is comparable to
> ping or an actual DNS lookup.

My first thought to solve both of these is that it shouldn't be too
hard to hand-craft a minimal DNS query and send it over UDP.  Then, I
hunted around a bit and found that somebody had already done that, in
spades.  Take a look at http://www.dnspython.org; it might be exactly
what's needed here.