I could need some help understanding the rules when assigning names to NS and MX records for my domains (I run my own Name Server).Here's what I have: 1. I host the domain tempel.org. 2. On my server, I run a Name Server, a Mail and a Web Server 3. Until now, the NS records look like this (I used NonSequitur): tempel.org. A 64.174.138.122 mail.tempel.org. CNAME tempel.org. ns.tempel.org. CNAME tempel.org. Then, I had these NS and MX assignments: tempel.org. NS ns.tempel.org tempel.org. MX mail.tempel.org
Bad move. NS and MX records must always point to names that have A records.
If they asked you the right questions, that means that they passed along the right data to the GTLD root servers for those to carry an A record for ns.tempel.org. That's a good thing, since it means that your DNS won't be very brokenI also have registered with my domain provider the name "ns.tempel.org" as a domain name server, and list that one with my master records.
Now to the question: Recently, I installed the Trial version of Quick DNS, which complained about the NS and MX entries. It was only happy when I changed them to use the A name, like this: tempel.org. NS tempel.org tempel.org. MX tempel.org
That's a good thing that QDNS is doing, but the wrong solution to it. [...]
Why not just change those CNAME's to A's???But one question remains: What about the fact that the master entry for my domain lists "ns.tempel.org" as the NS, not "tempel.org" (actually, if I'd try to use "tempel.org", I'd get quite a severe sounding warning that I should not do this).
It is always unequivocally WRONG to point an NS or MX records to a name without an A record. Some DNS resolvers will *correctly* not follow such a botched resolution path.
On the other hand, multiple A records pointing to the same IP address are perfectly acceptable and break nothing.
FWIW, a lot of people (including me) believe that CNAME's should be used in exactly two situations: classless in-addr.arpa delegation and
the migration of services from one machine to another. Anything else should just use real names with A records.
With that, it appears to me that the master record does not comply with my zone's SOA and NS infos (I understand that I should use the NS record's name also for the SOA record, right?): The master records say the SOA NS is ns.tempel.org, while my own records say it's "tempel.org". Now, is that a problem? Or is that just fine this way?
Well, that's okay since nothing ever really uses the host record in a SOA and even if they did, anyone other than you will be using the A record provided by the .org root servers for ns.tempel.org, not the CNAME.
You WILL have problems using the CNAME records that way, because it is counter to DNS standards and resolvers are getting increasingly picky about such things instead of just working with non-compliant configurations. You should junk them and do your DNS correctly.
--
Bill Cole
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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