System Administration Tools

A collection of Python-based system administration and automation utilities for DNS operations and GitHub organization management.

What This Skill Does

This skill helps you work with a suite of standalone Python scripts for common sysadmin tasks:

Instructions

Environment Setup

1. **Verify Python version and dependencies**:

- Check that Python 3.10 is available

- Verify Pipenv is installed for dependency management

- Install dependencies: `pipenv install`

- Activate virtual environment: `pipenv shell`

2. **Key dependencies**:

- `dnspython` - DNS operations

- `pandas` - Data manipulation and CSV export

- `requests` - GitHub API interactions

Working with DNS Tools

#### Single Domain MX Record Lookup (py_dns.py)

1. **Usage pattern**: `python py_dns.py <domain>`

2. **What it does**: Queries and prints MX records for the specified domain

3. **Output**: Console display of MX records

**Example**:

```bash

python py_dns.py example.com

```

#### Batch Email Domain Processing (py_dns_from_list.py)

1. **Prepare input**: Create `emails.txt` with one email address per line

2. **Run the script**: `python py_dns_from_list.py`

3. **Processing behavior**:

- Extracts domains from email addresses

- Queries MX records using Google DNS (8.8.8.8)

- Includes 200ms rate-limiting delay between requests

- Handles lookup failures gracefully

4. **Output**: Results exported to `emails2.txt` in CSV format

**Example workflow**:

```bash

Create input file

cat > emails.txt <<EOF

[email protected]

[email protected]

EOF

Run batch processor

python py_dns_from_list.py

Review results

cat emails2.txt

```

GitHub Organization Automation

#### Enable Dependabot Across Organization (gh_org_enable_dependabot.py)

1. **Prerequisites**:

- GitHub personal access token with appropriate permissions

- Organization name

2. **Usage**: `python gh_org_enable_dependabot.py <org> <token>`

3. **What it does**:

- Iterates through all repositories in the organization

- Creates a new branch named `enable-dependabot`

- Adds `dependabot.yml` configuration for GitHub Actions

- Creates a pull request for review

4. **Security note**: Tokens are passed as command-line arguments, not stored

**Example**:

```bash

python gh_org_enable_dependabot.py myorg ghp_token123456789

```

Code Modifications

When modifying these scripts:

1. **DNS tools**:

- Each script is standalone - no shared framework

- DNS operations use `dnspython` library

- CSV exports use `pandas` DataFrames

2. **GitHub automation**:

- Uses `requests` library for GitHub API v3

- Branch names and file paths are configurable

- Error handling should account for API rate limits

3. **Dependencies**:

- Python version is pinned to 3.10

- Use Pipenv for dependency management

- Repository has Dependabot enabled for automated updates

Important Notes

Troubleshooting