Creating A Records In WHM

[Pawel Kowalski]

I dont know the best place to post this since its a cPanel and then windows type question, so figured general discussion would work.

I am working to get my MCSE and to do that I set up a windowns 2003 lab at home with exchange 2003 running on it. The domain I set up for this lab is corporate.mesacreative.com. mesacreative.com is hosted on my VPS here at jag. So went to WHM and edited the dns zone for mesacreative.com. I added a A host record for corporate and pointed it to my home IP. This was yesterday, I still can not ping corporate.mesacreative.com. Are there any other steps I need to complete for this to work?

Also, I would like to point any mail that goes to me@corporate.mesacreative.com to my home exchange server. Would just making the A record work do this or do I also need to add an MX entry? If I need to add an MX entry how would that look like? I noticed I can add multiple MX entries for each domain, does that mean mail will be routed to all IP addresses I specify there?

[EuroNut]

The first part of what you did in WHM appears correct, so I can't offer an explanation as to why it's not resolving yet, other than a very poor DNS service from your ISP.

However, here's how I would do the whole job in one go (including mail) ....

To do this, you'll need to delete the entry you made for corporate in WHM "Edit DNS zone", and then start over as follows.

First, go into the cPanel for mesacreative.com and create a sub-domain "corporate"

This will create all the necessary entries for you, but as if you're hosting the sub-domain on your VPS - Then hop back into WHM "Edit DNS Zone" and you'll see entries for corporate, www.corporate, mail.corporate, a MX record, etc.

All you need to do then is edit the IP address set against these from your VPS to your home PC.

Hope this fixes it for you!

[thelucky4]

Check your DNS resolve? And make sure you are pinging/updating the appropriate DNS parents. Then for kicks I would restart Named/Bind.

[Frank Broughton]

Is your ISP blocking ports needed to access this?

[Pawel Kowalski]

Thanks, Euronut I can give this a shot, I'll do it later when I get home and let you know if it worked.

Frank, no comcast doesn't block anything (at least thats what they claim). I do have a router but for now I added the server to its DMZ and I can ping all services fine using the IP, just not the domain.

The windows2003 server it is pointing to has its own DNS server, I don't see why that would cause a problem but I want to make sure I mention that.

The lucky, you will have to excuse me, I am a total newbie to this. When you say check your DNS resolve I'm not sure I know what that means. How do I restart named/bind?

[EuroNut]

Thanks, Euronut I can give this a shot, I'll do it later when I get home and let you know if it worked.

Okies! Let me know if it works - I'm just interested if my logic is on form today

Frank, no comcast doesn't block anything

No comment!!

The windows2003 server it is pointing to has its own DNS server

DNS server is not the same as DNS client. So not relevant.

The lucky, you will have to excuse me, I am a total newbie to this. When you say check your DNS resolve I'm not sure I know what that means. How do I restart named/bind?

While you're in WHM, scroll all the way down to near the bottom of the left menu and you'll see the options to re-start various services on your VPS. It's probably not necessary in this case, but that's where the re-start options are for when you need them in the future.

[Pawel Kowalski]

I decided to see what Jag techs think of this and I got the following reply:

Hi,



We have checked and found the A record for corporate.mesacreative.com was properly added.However we have refreshed the dns zone file for that.Secondly as corporate.mesacreative.com is going to handle email activity outside this server so we have added its entry in the /etc/remotedomains file.Please wait till dns propagation and then check.



Please let us know if you need further assistance.



Regards,

Steve | Technical Support

So thanks to Steve for setting it up, but I'm still curious to know why cPanel doesn't do this automatically.

[EuroNut]

I decided to see what Jag techs think of this and I got the following reply:

So Steve did via root and SSH what you could have done in WHM

So thanks to Steve for setting it up, but I'm still curious to know why cPanel doesn't do this automatically.

It does! Just sometimes it needs a little kick (like restarting NAMED as previously mentioned further up this thread)

[Pawel Kowalski]

Cool. The dns hasn't propagated yet so I cant test it but will I need to do anything else to make it accept mail or is that all set up? I'm pretty stoked about this, will be cool to finally test out exchange in the real world.

[EuroNut]

Cool. The dns hasn't propagated yet so I cant test it but will I need to do anything else to make it accept mail or is that all set up? I'm pretty stoked about this, will be cool to finally test out exchange in the real world.

Yeah! I just checked and can now tell you why! LOL

Have you created your own nameservers on your VPS? like NS1 and NS2 mesacreative.com?

Because, right now, mesacreative.com is still using Jag's nameservers ns.nocdiect.com and ns2.nocdiect.com so any changes you make on your VPS have very little consequence.

Once you've switched to your own nameservers and updated your domain to use them at your registry then you'll start to see this stuff you're doing propagate. Till then, expect nuffink!

[Pawel Kowalski]

Oh man, no freaking way. I can't believe I did that. Those name servers are still left over from when I was on shared hosting. Thanks. I'll update them now and see what happens.

[Pawel Kowalski]

Sweet, works perfectly now.

[Pawel Kowalski]

Ok, now I am having issues adding the MX entry. When I got to Edit DNS Zone > Mesa Creative I see on the bottom the forms for adding additional entries.

The brackets represent a form, I put in:

[corporate.mesacreative] [14400] [MX] [][][]

There are the last 3 fields and WHM doesn't describe what they do, so I left them blank. I click add and I get that everything is okay:

Modifying Zone mesacreative.com
zone mesacreative.com/IN: loaded serial xxxxxx
OK

Bind reloading on vps using rndc zone: [mesacreative.com]

Reconfiguring Local Mail: This server will serve as the primary mail exchanger for mesacreative.com's mail.

Zone Modified!

But when I go back the new entry is not there. Any ideas?

[Pawel Kowalski]

I think I figured it out. I ended up just creating a new zone for corporate.mesacreative.com and that seems to have solved my issue.