SOA record

[paulo]

Hello,
I've searched through the forum and surprisingly I couldn't find anything addressing this issue -- perhaps I'm just going a bit blind...
In cPanel, the SOA record for any zone can be edited just like any other record. Apparently, this is not possible in DirectAdmin -- or, again, I'm going a bit blind... How can I edit the <rname>?
Thanks in advance for all pointers.

 

[MRM]

Shouldnt be done through your registrar?

 

[paulo]

Shouldnt be done through your registrar?

Er... No. I've been editing SOA records (not often, of course, but whenever necessary) for years using cPanel's Zone Manager. As far as I can see, DirectAdmin appears to exclude the SOA record from being edited through their GUI. I was wondering about the reasons for this and can't come up with any good explanations...

 

[Richard G]

I know what you mean. Normally there is no need to change SOA records as they are good as they are.
Indeed cPanel does have a Zone Manager in which you can change the SOA records to change defaults if needed.

DA came from a place where most things were done via SSH and for templates the /custom directory was used for customisation of things.
Since around 2019/2020 DA is starting to change things (probably due to the big flow of ex cPanel customers coming over) to put more and more things into the GUI.
But most important things first ofcourse. And as said, normally it's not required to edit SOA records, as you said you also not did it often.
So probably that is the reason that it's not (or not yet) implemented in the GUI.

Most of us don't need it in the GUI, but feel free to setup a feature request (you'll need a seperate free account) and get it upvoted.

 

[paulo]

Thanks for the comprehensive reply, Richard. I'm not averse to SSH but would greatly appreciate a bit of hand-holding to make sure that things don't get broken (new toys are full of surprises). Could you point me in the direction of the best procedure to edit the SOA record for a domain and propagate the zone to the bind slave? (Keeping both bind and DA happy, of course... )

 

[Richard G]

If it's the TTL you want to change, you can do it via the DNS administration, also possible to set all soa records to a lower time, temporarily or for a longer time. Normally all DNS changes are always propagated also to the bind slave.

If you want to do it for all records by default, you can edit the directadmin.conf file (in the /usr/local/directadmin/conf directory) and restart directadmin and things will change for you.
So it depends on what exactly you want to change and for how long.

I would want to suggest to look at these 2 doc entry's, the first also contains the command to reload bind so records get updated (normally both locally and slave).

Maintaining DNS records | Directadmin Docs

DirectAdmin Knowledge Base

docs.directadmin.com

and this one for template:

Version 1.53.0 | Directadmin Docs

DirectAdmin Knowledge Base

docs.directadmin.com

If you want to really change the template, copy the template to the /usr/local/directadmin/data/templates/custom directory (create if not exist), and make the changes there.

 

[paulo]

I actually just want to edit the <rname> (email address); the domain was transferred from a different VPS and we'd like to edit that email to the one we normally use. I don't want to do it for all records -- just this specific one. I've heard that inconsistent serial numbers can lead to complications (never had any such experience to be honest, and I'd rather keep it that way). The bottom line is that I'm not a DNS expert (someone once told me there are no DNS experts, but that's another story altogether!) and I can easily edit files and reload things but I wanted to make sure that bind and directadmin continue to be happy and the website in question continues to function as it should...

 

[Richard G]

Hmmz... yes we also never had inconsistant serial numbers here. But I always use the default which is something like hostmaster.domain.com so for admin's domain it's like hostmaster.admindomain.com and we use the nameservers there too.
Then in /etc/aliases we point root mail to the mail address where we receive reports from postmaster and hostmaster and whatever is present in the /etc/aliases file.

I wouldn't even worry about it to be for real. Especially if you're no DNS expert (which do exist) I would leave things as they are default, less chance to mess up something by accident.
Because if there is an update and you have a customized file, then be aware this will not be updated, you have to do that manually. Which is why imho it's best to leave things default if it's not really required to change them for some reason.

If you don't make mistakes by customizing, things will ofcourse keep working as should be.
But if it's for one domain, if I'm not mistaken, you have to change the db file for it. Then still issue the bind command to increase serial number so changes are passed to the slave.
However, I did not test and don't know, if on any DNS update of the domain, the .db file will get it's original SOA address again. Because you can't customise those files in a /custom directly like configs, as they can change more often.

So well... it's a choice, but I would just change the root address in the /etc/aliases file, which is wise to do anyway.
Like change this default:
#root: marc
to
root: [email protected]
then restart Exim and you're done.

And then you don't need to worry about editting bind db files anymore.