Nameserver and Domain Help

[pbc]

Hi,

Pretty new to WHM so you'll have to forgive any obvious questions. Reading so much documentation on all this I think fatigue is setting in!

I bought some domains earlier that look like they have holding nameservers on the registrar's website. One of these domains will be the main one with the intention of the others resolving to it as well. E.g. The main domain is intended to be example.com, with the others example.org, example.net, etc.

Later, I purchased a VPS, coming with its own IP. On accessing the VPS for the first time via the IP, I pretty much took all the default install options. The VPS is only intended to have one website on it, if that makes any difference.

Lets just say my hostname is:
vps.example.com

the IP is:
12.345.678.90

and the nameservers:
ns1.example.com
ns2.example.com

I went ahead and created a package and then a cPanel account in WHM, stating 'example.com' as the domain (pretty much left everything unlimited). I haven't really tinkered with this much since I thought I was getting a bit ahead of myself. Probably still need to go and create an Addon Domain here, maybe?


OK, so my main question is that I want to hook up these domains I purchased - how do I go about doing this?


Cue several questions rolling around in my head! Several of the docs I read state that the nameservers require their own separate IPs but I only have one (e.g. 12.345.678.90). Do I need to get more from somewhere? If I already have them somewhere, where can I find out what they are? Indeed, can I go ahead with just using one (some docs mention that's bad practice - is it?). Should my hosting company have provided them (was never mentioned when I did a sales enquiry)?


I know I can go to the registrar's website and update to the new namerservers there but they currently aren't accepted, indicating they're not set up correctly.

Thanks in advance!


PS - Also getting error emails stating 'tailwatchd on vps.example.com failed' (hourly) and '[ipcheck] Problems with dns setup on vps.example.com' (not resolving to the correct IP). Just about to look into fix these but any tips would be great.

[Infopro]

You might contact your host and see about getting a second IP. Tell them it's for your nameservers. Once those are both setup and working as expected, drop by your registrar, update the nameservers to yours.

Next decide if you want addon or parked for the others and add from that accounts cPanel page for this.

As for the emails, sounds like somethings not setup correctly of course.
Put your domain into a site like this for more details that might help you to resolve the problem. intoDNS: checks DNS and mail servers health


HTH

[pbc]

Hi Infopro, thanks very much for your help.

I do recall some different IPs coming up during the initial WHM install (first time I logged in). Wish I'd written these down (hindsight!) but surely I should be able to see any additional IPs I own under 'IP Functions >> Show or Delete Current IP Addresses'. All I see there is my single main one. Is it possible my host uses a shared IP for the second IP or does it have to be totally unique as well?

The other place I found some additional IPs was in the 'resolv.conf' file. Are these relative? The 3 IPs in here definitely aren't unique to me. My hosts documentation mentions them as nameserver addresses that are recursive. I'm just about to go read up on this more.

Pretty sure my error emails messages go away once I get the nameserver sorted. intodns.com mentions issues with the nameservers - linked with not having the ns1 & ns2 set up yet.


On another note, tried clicking on 'Assign IP Address' in 'Server Configuration >> Basic cPanel/WHM Setup'. A window popped up but didn't do anything - the IP never got assigned. Read somewhere that this might be a bug - is this true?

[Spiral]

Pbc, you are officially scaring me!

Your server provider should have told you the IP addresses that you are assigned. Most give at least 2 addresses standard but a few only give 1 IP address and you have to request or purchase more IP addresses.

The IP addresses shown in /etc/resolv.conf or during most of your installation have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the IP addresses that are assigned to your server. Those IP addresses have to do with your server being able to communicate with the rest of the world and resolve external addresses outside the bounds of your server.

Jumping back to your first post, sounds more like you would want to use "PARKED" domains than "ADDON" domains for your additional domains.

[linux7802]

Cue several questions rolling around in my head! Several of the docs I read state that the nameservers require their own separate IPs but I only have one (e.g. 12.345.678.90). Do I need to get more from somewhere? If I already have them somewhere, where can I find out what they are? Indeed, can I go ahead with just using one (some docs mention that's bad practice - is it?). Should my hosting company have provided them (was never mentioned when I did a sales enquiry)?

Regarding to above question ask your VPS provider about secondary ip address,so that you can register name servers for your VPS from your domain name (example.com) registrar end control panel as well as please read following thread

How to set name servers from WHM for new Server/VPS? | Linux Servers cPanel webhosting blog

and for your another question about Hostname please read following thread

Common problem for VPS clients about Hostname? | Linux Servers cPanel webhosting blog

[pbc]

Hi guys, thanks for your help. Just getting a chance to return to this now.

@Spiral - hope I didn't scare you too much. You'll have to forgive me - cPanel I'm quite comfortable with but dealing with the WHM/IP/Linux stuff isn't really my forte. Just kinda got thrown in at the deep end. That said, I really appreciate picking up all this knowledge - just wish I had time to learn this stuff properly from start to finish in an orderly fashion!

This stuff appears not to be as straight forward as I'd hoped and I can't deny the phrase 'can of worms' has been mumbled a few times from my lips.


@linux7802, thanks for those links. I believe I followed the instructions in them but still having several issues (some of them I couldn't follow due to problems described in issue 1 below so possibly had a knock-on efffect). Maybe some of the symptoms I list below indicate a missing step somewhere.


The current status is this: I got the two additional IPs and assigned them to the ns1 and ns2 nameservers (so I now have these in addition to the server's IP). I changed from BIND to NSD (Service Configuration >> Nameserver Selection) because BIND was too much of a resource hog (did this pretty recently so don't believe it has much impact on the below issues).

I'll number the issues just for clarity (some may be related).


1) Had to assign the IPs as nameservers via SSH & pico on the 'nameserverips' file because it wouldn't work in WHM. Whenever I tried to assign an IP address through 'Server Configuration >> Basic cPanel/WHM Setup' I get the same problem as described here: http://forums.cpanel.net/f5/help-can...er-109549.html

To work around this, I went to 'DNS Functions >> Edit DNS Zone' and added in the nameservers with 'A' entries relating to their IP addresses. Should this suffice? If there are any other steps I may be missing then let me know.


2) Everything looks a lot healthier in the 'intodns.com' report but I get the following warnings:
NS Different subnets WARNING: Not all of your nameservers are in different subnets
NS Different autonomous systems WARNING: Single point of failure


3) I also still get the tailwatchd failed error. Tracked it down in the log file and the last line mentions the following:
2009-09-29 01:35:04 UTC [Cpanel::TailWatch] Restored /var/log/maillog (size:15348) to 0 (requested 0)
install_driver(mysql) failed: Can't locate DBD/mysql.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/local/cpanel /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/CPAN/overload/__Time /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i686-linux /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/i686-linux /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl .) at (eval 17) line 3.
Perhaps the DBD::mysql perl module hasn't been fully installed,
or perhaps the capitalisation of 'mysql' isn't right.
Available drivers: DBM, ExampleP, File, Gofer, Proxy, Sponge.
at /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/TailWatch/Eximstats.pm line 252

Any fixes suggested?


4) I successfully have my domain finding the server and a test page I put up there so I thought that was great. I then discovered something's not quite right, though. The whois lookup still points back to the old holding IP yet, when I type in my domain, it properly goes to my server. I'm guessing this this a reverse DNS issue.


Sorry for the long-winded post! Any pointers would be really appreciated.

[pbc]

Here's the layout of my DNS Zone, as seen under 'DNS Functions >> Edit DNS Zone'.

For the sake of it, we'll say the example IPs equate as follows:
11.111.111.11 = vps.example.com
22.222.222.22 = ns1.example.com
33.333.333.33 = ns2.example.com


Main body of DNS Zone:

example.com. 	86400 IN NS ns1.example.com.
example.com. 	86400 IN NS ns2.example.com.
example.com. 	14400 IN A 11.111.111.11
localhost 	14400 IN A 127.0.0.1
localhost.com. 	14400 IN MX 0 example.com.
mail 		14400 IN CNAME example.com.
www 		14400 IN CNAME example.com.
ftp 		14400 IN A 11.111.111.11
cpanel 		14400 IN A 11.111.111.11
whm 		14400 IN A 11.111.111.11
webmail 	14400 IN A 11.111.111.11
webdisk 	14400 IN A 11.111.111.11
ns1 		14400 IN A 22.222.222.22
ns2 		14400 IN A 33.333.333.33
vps 		14400 IN A 11.111.111.11

Anything missing or wrong here?

[pbc]

OK, I may have fixed issue 3. Have stopped receiving error emails there are no longer errors being reported in /usr/local/cpanel/logs/tailwatched_log since running the following in SSH:
/scripts/perlinstaller --force Bundle:BD::mysql


Is there a chance that the original WHM install didn't complete properly - if the above bundle didn't originally install properly then could other parts of the installation be missing as well? Is there any decent way to check the integrity of that original installation?


Issues 1, 2 and 4 have a good chance of being related. I'm wondering if it's the 72 hour internet propagation time but I'm not convinced. That time is almost up so will soon tell.