I already had Bind on the machine so it was logical to add the zone there and utilize nsupdate : https://gist.github.com/kronthto/893715f12cc0b1cda9fcfdbd8dc176

I already had Bind on the machine so it was logical to add the zone there and utilize nsupdate : https://gist.github.com/kronthto/893715f12cc0b1cda9fcfdbd8dc176b8 https://gist.github.com/kronthto/893715f12cc0b1cda9fcfdbd8dc... But what you are suggesting should work just fine aswell - there should be no need for a persistent service. Of course the service would need to run on port 53, so you actually cannot have another nameserver on that machine already, and also require CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE . A quick search lead me to this python project that could be an inspiration: https://github.com/pawitp/acme-dns-server https://github.com/pawitp/acme-dns-server