Using a nameserver

Greetings everyone,

I have been through everything on here that I could think of to search for, relating to my issue, and now I hope someone can help or at least point me in the right direction.

I am a new DreamHost customer, and am hosting one of my business sites here. However, I would like to use the nameserver that I have registered with my domain registrar. With other hosting services, the process was pretty cut-and-dry. However, I am experiencing all sorts of problems here, and I really just want to push through them to get things underway.

Anyhow, my registered nameservers are ns1.envisionocity.net and ns2.envisionocity.net and ever since last night, my site on DreamHost has become inaccessible--I'm assuming, it's due to my having added them to the DNS records in the Manage Domains section.

Backtracking a bit here, for some additional details:

When I registered the nameservers at the registrar, I used the fixed IP for my site with DreamHost, as I am paying for a dedicated IP at this point. The IP is 208.97.140.106 on DreamHost. This is how it would work with other hosting services that I have worked with in the past (and one other one that I currently am with, as well).

Back to DreamHost, and Manage Domains...

In the Manage Domains, there is the option to Add a DNS Record. In there, this is what I did.

Name: (left blank, for the default 'envisionocity.net')
Type: NS
Value: ns1.envisionocity.net
Comment: (none)

I did the same for ns2.*.*

I checked later to see if the whois reflected the adjusted nameservers, and it did. However, late last night, the site stopped resolving. I have been working on trying to figure out what's wrong ever since then.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Timothy Kline
http://envisionocity.net

Your domain is not resolving because you're using invalid nameservers. You're using the IP address of the web server hosting your site, but this machine isn't a DNS server. Change the nameservers for your domain to ns1 and ns2.dreamhost.com and it will start working again.

Also note that listing two nameservers for your domain is pointless if you're creating two A records pointing to the same server:

$ host ns1.envisionocity.net
ns1.envisionocity.net has address 208.97.140.106

$ host ns2.envisionocity.net
ns2.envisionocity.net has address 208.97.140.106

The purpose of listing two is so your domain resolves if one is unavailable (like right now).

Thank you for replying. I definitely appreciate it.

However, I do not want to use DreamHost's nameservers at this point, which is why I registered nameservers at my domain registrar instead. But you're right about it being pointless to use identical IPs (smack on forehead).

What I am trying to accomplish is that when someone views my WhoIs, they see my personal nameserver there in lieu of DreamHost's. If I switch to DreamHost's ns1 and ns2, they will be shown in my WhoIs records, instead of mine. And since I build sites for others, I would rather keep who I am hosting with off-record, and thus am wanting to use my personal nameservers.

What would I need to do in order to accomplish this for my account with DreamHost? Do I drop my registered nameserver at my registrar and keep ns1.envisionocity.net and ns2.envisionocity.net in the Manage Domain-->DNS section, and use DH's nameservers for the domain at the registrar? Or would this result in DH's nameservers being listed in my WhoIs?

Again, I appreciate the help tremendously.

Timothy Kline
http://envisionocity.net

You have two choices then:

1. Contact DH and ask if you can create A records in your domain pointing to their nameserver IP addresses. Note that this may break if they renumber the network these servers live on.

2. Get DNS service from someone who will let you do this and point the DNS records for your web sites to the IP addresses of the web servers your sites are on. Note that this may break if they renumber the network these servers live on.

Attempting to hide who you're buying service from is futile. Anyone who knows enough to check your whois record for this probably also knows enough to look up the ownership of the IP addresses of your sites. Also note that the technical contact for your site really should be the individual/role responsible for your DNS and mail service. If you're not managing these services yourself, this shouldn't be you. If this contact is changed to DH, which it probably should be, that alone will give it away, regardless of your nameservers.

In reply to:
You have two choices then:

1. Contact DH and ask if you can create A records in your domain pointing to their nameserver IP addresses. Note that this may break if they renumber the network these servers live on.

2. Get DNS service from someone who will let you do this and point the DNS records for your web sites to the IP addresses of the web servers your sites are on. Note that this may break if they renumber the network these servers live on.

Again, thank you so much! You've been a great help, and it gave me what I needed to know.

In reply to:

Attempting to hide who you're buying service from is futile. Anyone who knows enough to check your whois record for this probably also knows enough to look up the ownership of the IP addresses of your sites.

Yes, I know. But it's still nice to have a layer of anonymity, because some people don't dig that deep and just look at the WhoIs... but I hear what you're saying.

In reply to:

Also note that the technical contact for your site really should be the individual/role responsible for your DNS and mail service. If you're not managing these services yourself, this shouldn't be you. If this contact is changed to DH, which it probably should be, that alone will give it away, regardless of your nameservers.

Right. And in this case, the technical info is mine, as I maintain all of that. This was an entirely new situation that I found myself in, because with other hosts, it was pretty cut-and-dry and I had it operational within minutes. And they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks...? lol

Again, thanks for the follow-ups. Gave me some things to try, and I've got a feeling my site will be back up in short order. Yayy!!

In appreciation,
Timothy Kline
http://envisionocity.net

AFAIK, there's no easy proceedure for (correctly) doing what you want from the web panel.

I don't know if they still do it, but you can contact support and see if it is still possible to get custom nameservers setup, for a fee (setup fee, + monthly recurring fees for the IPs). This is a fairly non-standard setup, though - and if you wanted to use those nameservers for other domains, you'd have to have support manually change the nameservers for each domain as you added it.

What you did (getting a unique IP and registering that as a nameserver) won't work, because there is no nameserver on that machine to respond. That IP is just configured on the machine handling web services for your domain.

In reply to:

AFAIK, there's no easy proceedure for (correctly) doing what you want from the web panel.

I don't know if they still do it, but you can contact support and see if it is still possible to get custom nameservers setup, for a fee (setup fee, + monthly recurring fees for the IPs). This is a fairly non-standard setup, though - and if you wanted to use those nameservers for other domains, you'd have to have support manually change the nameservers for each domain as you added it.

What you did (getting a unique IP and registering that as a nameserver) won't work, because there is no nameserver on that machine to respond. That IP is just configured on the machine handling web services for your domain.

Thanks for the follow-up.

What I decided to do was revert back to my domain registrar's nameservers. That way, I can handle everything right there. I utilized the 'A' settings, and set them to the dedicated IP address for my site. While the IP may change at a future date at DH, although dedicated, any changes can be modified and made effective within minutes at my domain registrar (I've experienced this in the past, and changes are almost always effective within less than 2 hours, but typically instantly). Now I'm just waiting on the new nameserver selection to propogate back to my domain registrar, and everything should be back up and running when I get up in the morning so I can proceed with my projects.

Timothy Kline
http://envisionocity.net

Adding NS records in the DH panel isn't what you want, because you don't want to use the DH nameserver. You will end up with 2 different nameservers trying to publish records for the same domain name.

If you are willing to live with the possibility of the IP address changing, then stick with what you've got. One thing you can try, however, is to host your site under a different domain, since DH provides a free domain registration with a hosting plan. (Or you can use a subdomain of dreamhosters.com.) Once you have that working, you can use a CNAME record on your registrar's nameservers to make the connection. I don't have a static IP, so I haven't tried this myself.