HOWTO - provide sites with private nameservers, without additional IP addresses

ProWebUK

ProWebUK

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It has been tried and tested ;) it will work with DirectAdmin, Ensim, Plesk and CPanel (plesk and cpanel have yet to be tested)

Instructions for DirectAdmin

1 -> Make sure the domain you want to use for nameservers resolves to the server

2 -> In the DirectAdmin Admin control panel, select DNS ADMINISTARTION (this may vary with different skins)

3 -> Select the domain that will be used for the nameservers

4 -> Add an "A" record for the nameserver (example is included as an attatchemnt :) )

5 -> once you have successfully added ns1.yourdomain with your primary nameserver IP address, follow step 4, this time chnaging NS1.yourdomain.com to NS2.yourdomain.com. Dont forget the IP will also need to be the IP for your real secondary namserver

6 -> now point any domain you want to ns1 / ns2.domain.com and you have your custom nameservers :)

Feel free to leave your comments and / or suggestions here

As Jeff has pointed out below, you may need to add the records through your registar for domains to successfully link to your new nameservers

Chris (DA Man :) )
 
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Don't forget to register the nameserver as a "host/nameserver" with the registrar you used to register the domain. This is NOT the same as listing a nameserver to be used with the domain, and every registrar does it differently.

If you don't, you don't get a "glue record" in DNS and many registrars won't accept the nameserver when registering domains with it.

Jeff
 
Hi Jeff,

Thanks for your input, i will add a bote although as i stated, it has been tried and tested and a domain successfully resolves to the new nameservers.

Both the domain with which now has the nameservers and the domain linking to the nameservers work fine.

Chris
 
If you'll give me the name of the domain with the nameservers, and the domain for which you've added the nameservers, I'll do a lookup for you, and show you the problem.

If you're seriously interested in the why's and wherefore's of DNS, join the bind-users mailing list run by the company that wrote bind. Among other people writing on that list is Cricket Liu; he's one of the authors of the authoritative book "DNS and Bind".

Jeff
 
4 -> Add an "A" record for the nameserver (example is included as an attatchemnt )

Sorry, cant see the example, can you just post here please?

Thanx
 
196.22.21.100 - Server IP (blade.serverempire.com)
196.22.21.101 - Master Reseller NS1, + serverempire.com (admin, reseller & user levels)
196.22.21.102 - Master Reseller NS2
196.22.21.103 - Reseller2 (Shared IP for his clients)
196.22.21.104 - Reseller3 (Shared IP for his clients)
196.22.21.105 - Reseller4 (Shared IP for his clients)
196.22.21.106 - Reseller5 (Shared IP for his clients)


Basically the server IP will not be used to store any domains on, the servers 2 and only real nameservers
will be set to ns1.serverempire.com and ns2.serverempire.com and all other resellers will share these. Any
domain I create on my master account will be stored on the 196.22.21.101 IP, all other resellers get there own
dedicated IP, and their clients will share these with them.

I assume this is all possible ?

Thanx
 
Your example confuses me.

However you can point all your ns1.example.com nameservers and all your ns2.example.com nameservers to the same IP#s with these steps:

1) Make sure the nameservers are registered with the same registrar that registered the domain name, on the IP#s that are already running nameservers.

2) Create in example.com (for each domain) ns1 and ns2 records, pointing to the IP#s you want to use.

3) For each domain pointing to these nameservers change the NS records to point to the nameservers you want to use.

Jeff
 
I assume I only need to create the A and NS records for the resellers domain and not the domains he hosts ?

Cheers
 
xcensus said:
I assume I only need to create the A and NS records for the resellers domain and not the domains he hosts ?
Click to expand...

Don't assume; it's never safe :) .

You'll need to create the A records for the reseller's domain (though I'd publish a how-to so the reseller who wants his own nameservers can do it himself.

Then either you or the reseller will have to create NS records for EVERY domain the reseller wants to have his own domain names listed for.

And of course will have to make sure the domains' registries has those nameservers listed as well as the site nameservers.

Jeff
 
We recently installed DA on FreeBSD 5.3 server. The only thing left is to deal with name server.

Now I can see "named" process up and running in the process list, but I am unable to make any request with "nslookup" tool: the only thing I get is: *** ns.xxx.lt can't find xxx.lt: No response from server.

There was a fresh installation – so it should be no problem with DNS configuration, except one thing:

we got two DNS servers: primary is our ns.xxx.lt and secondary is ns.our_registrar.lt, which is not controlled by DA. How should we set up DNS in this case?
 
Setting up your nameservers on DA, and even setting them up on linux or unix, has nothing to do with setting up nameservers for your internal DNS resolution (as for nslookup).

What does your /etc/resolv.conf file contain?

Jeff
 
I solved that problem myself. In default FreeBSD 5.3 instaliations BIND is enablend only for local queries. I got to RTFM, and to edit some files from /etc/namedb. After that all is working. You should think about some kind of "FreeBSD for DA instaliation HOW-TO" - this is not as easy as "insert CD, boot-up and follow instructions".
 
"6 -> now point any domain you want to ns1 / ns2.domain.com and you have your custom nameservers"

i don't quite understand step 6. in the reseller package you need two ip for reseller's name server so do you just set ip to 0 in the reseller package and for personal nameserver option you set to 0 and when they created their name server you point their name server ns1 and ns2 to your own ns1 and ns2?
 
Generally it's best to do in this order.

Inside DA
Example NS Records:
findlocal.org. A 72.36.205.154
ns1.findlocal.org. A 72.36.205.154
ns2.findlocal.org. A 72.36.205.155
findlocal.org. NS ns1.findlocal.org.
findlocal.org. NS ns2.findlocal.org.

Comments:
- The IPs can be the server's address, shared, or private. The address simply gets a requestor to the server running the DNS services. The server can listen on any address it has.
- DNS services are unrelated to IP sharing. Therefore, because you are using an address for DNS services does not mean that it is now a shared IP if you want to put a domain on it. There can be zero domains on the IP or 1 in the case of dedicated, or more than one in the case of shared.

Outside DA
Create your name servers
- This must be done at your registrar. As mentioned earlier, this is different with every one. If your registrar doesn't have this, I'd find another registrar. When creating the name server they will ask you for their names and IP address. Using the above example you would add:
ns1.findlocal.org 72.36.205.154
ns2.findlocal.org 72.36.205.155
You are required to have at least two for reasons of redundancy, but as you can see, there really is no redundancy. The fact is, they could both be on the same IP address. There can be more than on domain also on the same IP address. As an example you could have ns1.findlocalweather.com on 155, and ns2.findlocalweather.com on 154. Once this is completed, your registrar will register your name servers for you automatically. This simply registers your name servers as an NS resource, and nothing more. After this is complete, wait for your name servers to resolve. This normally takes a longer than you would think. You can check it with nslookup ns1.findlocal.org etc. If it takes longer than 48 hours, there is something wrong. Either your DA server doesn't have the proper records in it, usually, or there is something wrong on the registrar end.

Point the Domain to your new name servers
After your name servers resolve, you can now point your domain to the new name servers. Again visit your registrar, and change the DNS servers for the domain to your new name servers. This normally resolves quite a bit faster than registering the name servers. Now, for the first time, will your new server be seen as the authoritative source for address information for your domain.

Verify proper operation
You can verify proper operation by doing an nslookup like this:
nslookup -type=ns findlocal.org ns1.findlocal.org
Your output should look like this:
findlocal.org nameserver = ns2.findlocal.org
findlocal.org nameserver = ns1.findlocal.org
ns1.findlocal.org internet address = 72.36.205.154
ns2.findlocal.org internet address = 72.36.205.155
*Note, I specified which name server to use in my nslookup. This is so you don't pick up some cached information from some other router that may not be up to date.

Summary
Does the order matter? That depends.
- If it is a live site, then yes the order matters if you want smooth transition from one server to another.
- If it is not a live site, or it is an emergency situation and the original site is down anyway, then you could do it all at the same time and when all of the pieces fall into place, it begin to work at the earliest possible moment.
 
Some thinks i not understand about this tutorial. I want to create a reseller without an additional IP adress.

Please tell me if i am wrong:
1. Create an Reseller packet
1.1. Reseller Ip: 1
1.2. Reseller Personal DNS: NONE
1.3. Reseller can use Server IP: YES

2. Create an Reseller
2.1. Domain IP: Shared – Server

If i go back to Admin > IP Management
The FREE ip is assignt by this Reseller

Now the problem:
I got a error if i create an another Reseller.
It’s not a critical error and it’s not good i think
ERROR: Reseller only got 0 of his 1 ips.

Is this the right way to create Resellers on the same IP adress?
 
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