Nameservers and DNS - Appropriate Steps to Move to A VPS?

Question

I bought a VPS and I am trying to transfer my domain over to the new server, I took two steps so far, but I don't think I did it quite right as its been 24 hours and most all DNS check sites still indicate errors with my name-servers. Here is what I have done so far,

• Made new nameservers in my namecheap account
• (ns1.domain.com) and (ns2.domain.com) with the same IP as my VPS only has one IP.
• Then I went in and changed the name servers for the domain itself to the newly made name-servers.

Is there any more to be done? The VPS does not have cPanel, and this is my first time setting up LAMP, and dealing straight from the command line for everything without the help of WHM or cPanel. Thanks everyone, necro.

Answer 1

Unless you're running your own DNS server (typically BIND), you don't need to muck about with your nameserver settings inside of namescheap. Running BIND is a fairly complicated matter requiring significant DNS engineering skills, so it's unlikely that this is your situation.

I would suggest restoring your domain's nameserver settings back to normal and modifying the correct Host records to point to your new VPS:

1. Inside of Namecheap's "Manage Domains" panel, click "Transfer DNS to Webhost" and select "Use Namecheap Hosting DNS Servers" and Save.

2. Under "Nameserver Registration", delete the IP address from all listed name servers. This will remove any overrides you've configured and default back to the Namescheap DNS servers.

3. Under "All Host Records", change the 'www' record to point to your VPS IP. If your '@' record is of type 'A (Address)', you should enter your IP there as well and click Save Changes.

Answer 2

You have long way to go now. You'll need to understand DNS thoroughly. Just buy any good DNS book( DNS and BIND, 5th Edition - O'Reilly Media is good enough) and learn how to configure it. You can use Webmin to configure you VPS but it's little buggy. I also tried like you, but later switched to Managed VPS with Cpanel due to shortage of time(I now pay $27/month for Managed 1GB ram VPS from Soladrive).

In fact with Cpanel doing DNS is easy. Most of values are simply default. To be frank to be fluent in DNS is a network's administrator's job since debugging Bind, setting up, Secondary name servers will be difficult and will divert your effort away from web development activities.

Now you need run DNS server on your VPS using bind. You need to assign it ns1 and ns2 for the same single IP address.

There is alternate solution to use service of third party DNS service providers like dnsmadeeasy.com which are better in every aspect except for cost if you can bear.

But if you want to learn it, then you're on the right path.

Check your dns using intodns.com regularly for any dns issues.

Answer 3

Check whether your dns is updated or not in whois.

Do you have DNS manager interface in your VPS? Set A / AAA records to redirect your url to that IP.

Answer 4

As you have only one IP you may register only one nameserver. Then install BIND9 or other dns server and add DNS records like cname, mx etc. for your domain here. Suppose you own domain: example.com and ip: 96.7.88.116, here, example.com will be resolved to registered nameserver say: ns.example.com and ns.example.com will resolve to 96.7.88.116.

Alternatively you can use Namecheap's default nameserver to hold dns records of example.com and then add A record pointing to your IP.

    example.com.   A   96.7.88.116

Further, add following in /etc/hosts file:

    96.7.88.116       example.com

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