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community.dns.lookup lookup – Look up DNS records

Note

This lookup plugin is part of the community.dns collection (version 3.3.0).

You might already have this collection installed if you are using the ansible package. It is not included in ansible-core. To check whether it is installed, run ansible-galaxy collection list.

To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install community.dns. You need further requirements to be able to use this lookup plugin, see Requirements for details.

To use it in a playbook, specify: community.dns.lookup.

New in community.dns 2.6.0

Synopsis

  • Look up DNS records.

Requirements

The below requirements are needed on the local controller node that executes this lookup.

  • dnspython >= 1.15.0 (maybe older versions also work)
  • ipaddress (on Python 2.7 when using server)

Terms

Parameter

Comments

Terms

list / elements=string / required

Domain name(s) to query.

Keyword parameters

This describes keyword parameters of the lookup. These are the values key1=value1, key2=value2 and so on in the following examples: lookup('community.dns.lookup', key1=value1, key2=value2, ...) and query('community.dns.lookup', key1=value1, key2=value2, ...)

Parameter

Comments

nxdomain_handling

string

How to handle NXDOMAIN errors. These appear if an unknown domain name is queried.

empty (default) returns an empty result for that domain name. This means that for the corresponding domain name, nothing is added to _result.

fail makes the lookup fail.

message adds the string NXDOMAIN to _result.

Choices:

  • "empty" ← (default)
  • "fail"
  • "message"

query_retry

integer

Number of retries for DNS query timeouts.

Default: 3

query_timeout

float

Timeout per DNS query in seconds.

Default: 10.0

boolean

added in community.dns 3.0.0

If false, the input is assumed to be an absolute domain name.

If true, the input is assumed to be a relative domain name if it does not end with ., the search list configured in the system’s resolver configuration will be used for relative names, and the resolver’s domain may be added to relative names.

Note that this behavior changed in community.dns 3.0.0. In community.dns 2.x.y, search=false was the only available choice.

Choices:

  • false
  • true ← (default)

server

list / elements=string

The DNS server(s) to use to look up the result. Must be a list of one or more IP addresses.

By default, the system’s standard resolver is used.

servfail_retries

integer

How often to retry on SERVFAIL errors.

Default: 0

type

string

The record type to retrieve.

Choices:

  • "A" ← (default)
  • "AAAA"
  • "CAA"
  • "CNAME"
  • "DNAME"
  • "DNSKEY"
  • "DS"
  • "HINFO"
  • "LOC"
  • "MX"
  • "NAPTR"
  • "NS"
  • "NSEC"
  • "NSEC3"
  • "NSEC3PARAM"
  • "PTR"
  • "RP"
  • "RRSIG"
  • "SOA"
  • "SPF"
  • "SRV"
  • "SSHFP"
  • "TLSA"
  • "TXT"

Notes

Note

  • When keyword and positional parameters are used together, positional parameters must be listed before keyword parameters: lookup('community.dns.lookup', term1, term2, key1=value1, key2=value2) and query('community.dns.lookup', term1, term2, key1=value1, key2=value2)
  • Note that when using this lookup plugin with lookup(), and the result is a one-element list, Ansible simply returns the one element not as a list. Since this behavior is surprising and can cause problems, it is better to use query() instead of lookup(). See the examples and also Forcing lookups to return lists in the Ansible documentation.

Examples

- name: Look up A (IPv4) records for example.org
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ query('community.dns.lookup', 'example.org.') }}"

- name: Look up AAAA (IPv6) records for example.org
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: "{{ query('community.dns.lookup', 'example.org.', type='AAAA' ) }}"

Return Value

Key

Description

Return value

list / elements=string

The records of type type for all queried DNS names.

If multiple DNS names are queried in _terms, the resulting lists have been concatenated.

Returned: success

Sample: ["127.0.0.1"]

Authors

  • Felix Fontein (@felixfontein)

© 2012–2018 Michael DeHaan
© 2018–2025 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/community/dns/lookup_lookup.html