Forum Moderators: phranque
Since I had no idea at all how DNS worked, I searched on google and found several tutorials for Webmin / BIND DNS, but unfortunately I've been unable to get it to work right.
My first question is about some terminology that I am getting confused by. I don't understand the difference between my domain nam, a master server, a host, and a nameserver. Some of these terms appear to be used interchangeably, and that's throwing me off a bit.
The company gave me two dedicated IP addresses so I could use private nameservers. I've heard this isn't the best thing to do, but I'm not sure what other option I have as my hosting company didn't provide any of their generic nameservers like my previous host did. In my welcome email they told me my ip addresses would be x.x.x.1 and x.x.x.2, and if I wanted to set up private nameservers I would point the first to ns1.mydomainname.com, and the second to ns2.mydomainname.com. I created these and pointed my domain name to them at my registrar.
In my welcome email they also told me that my domain name was host.mydomainname.com. Huh? I thought mydomainname.com was my domain name.
I created a master zone with (mydomainname.com. A x.x.x.1). Then I created two NS records: (mydomainname.com NS ns1.mydomainname.com) and (mydomainname.com NS ns2.mydomainname.com). Then I created an alias (www.mydomainname.com.) with real name (mydomainname.com).
When I type in www.mydomainname.com in firefox, nothing happens. It acts busy for a couple seconds, then stops and never goes anywhere. This leads me to believe that something is working properly, as it usually puts up an alert box saying it couldn't find anything if there's a problem. I used dnsreport.com and it put up the following things which puzzled me:
"WARN ¦ SOA MNAME Check ¦ WARNING: Your SOA (Start of Authority) record states that your master (primary) name server is: (host.mydomainname.com.). However, that server is not listed at the parent servers as one of your NS records! This is probably legal, but you should be sure that you know what you are doing."
Why is it saying (host.mydomainname.com.) is my primary nameserver when I was told to use ns1.mydomainname.com? When I go to zone parameters in Webmin it says my master server is (host.mydomainname.com.)
Also, for whatever reason, I am able to connect to my control panel both through my primary IP address and through a port of www.mydomainname.com. So there is apparently some functioning but it's not serving anything.
Do I need to set something else up so the server points to /var/www/html as the default? I have an index.html but it's not being served.
I also have a Virtuozzo Power Panel which says the following cryptic stuff:
"VPS: host.mydomainname.com"
"Hostname: host.mydomainname.com"
The host subdomain of mydomainname.com is throwing me off completely. I've got no idea what this means.
Can somebody shed some light on this obviously confused mess I've got on my hands?
