open-nic

Use OpenNIC DNS right now

Current status as of 1st nov 13:

• works fine on Debian
• does not work on Mint/Ubuntu (runs as intented but for some reason it has no effect -see below)

What is OpenNIC and why should I use it ?

The OpenNIC project is an alternative DNS provider. Users of the OpenNIC DNS servers are able to resolve all existing ICANN top-level domains (TLD) as well as their own.

You should use it if you're concerned about censorship, if you don't want your internet provider to know every site you visit, if you want to support independant projects, and maybe if you want to access .geek, .indy, .free, .ing… websites, that are only served by OpenNIC.

http://www.opennicproject.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenNIC

How to use this script

The scripts depends on the resolvconf package (by default in Mint/Ubuntu) and the BeautifulSoup4 python library (by default ?). To install the dependencies:

 sudo apt-get install resolvconf
 sudo apt-get install python-pip && sudo pip install BeautifulSoup4

Download the script and call:

 sudo python opennic-set.py

Or run:

wget https://raw.github.com/vindarel/open-nic/master/opennic-set.py && sudo python opennic-set.py

Now you will keep using the same DNS providers for all the usual websites, but you will also be able to access OpenNIC's TLDs. If you would like to always use OpenNIC's servers, then you have to copy /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/tail to …/head.

You should now be able to access this website: http://wiki.opennic.glue/SponsoredTLDs). You can also test with:

 python opennic-set.py --test

What the script does

More precisely, the script does the following:

• it retrieves which are the nearest OpenNIC DNS servers from your location thanks to the project's homepage (if their site isn't reachable it takes 3 servers by default)
• it adds them to the configuration file used by resolvconf (/etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/tail) (a backup is made)
• it runs resolvconf -u to update the configuration (you can see changes in /etc/resolv.conf)
• it tests wether we can access opennic's TLDs.

Every remark welcomed.

Known issues

It runs as expected in Mint/Ubunt but has no effect. The bug is reproductible:

• add the line nameserver 185.19.105.6 # openNic at the beginning of /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head
• execute sudo resolvconf -u
• you should be able to access the url given above, but you can't. With Debian it's ok.

More info

• on network conf: http://www.linux-france.org/prj/edu/archinet/systeme/ch03s02.html