do I understand DNS?
posted by tim caynes » Friday December 12, 2008 » Permalink » Comments [4]

no. I don't get it. I went on the network administration course and everything but I still can't map one domain to another with all that A and CNAME stuff. I can't even understand the help I read when I'm looking for help that I can't even find because I don't even know how to ask for it. well, that's not strictly true. I can at least type "DNS CNAME map domain not redirect or forward my head hurts" into google and trawl through a million self-proclaimed experts with hello world paint shop pro banners who will proceed to enlighten me in such a way that they obviously understand what they're talking about themselves but I still have no idea even after reading it a few time and mentally underlining the bits that look relevant so I can come back to them when I understand a bit more which I never do so it's pointless. I do know now that if you've been in a marketing organization longer than you've been in a service organization you are officially too stupid to work things out for yourself anymore and the preferred method is to ask somebody who does know what they're doing how much it will cost if they do it for you at which point they see from the way you've written and signed your email that you're in marketing and so it'll immediately cost double the number they first thought of. which, in this case, means I should have just got the domain through the service that can configure the DNS for me for free instead of buying it from my regular domain broker and then trying to use a control panel from 1994 to tweak IPs and stuff. and then waiting for a day to see that you're in no better state than you were yesterday and you don't have any idea why not. its a bit like playing mastermind with someone but walking between each other's houses 15 miles apart between each move to see if you've learned anything.

don't offer to help. I like the pain.


Comments:

What does going through some webspace/DNS hoster's web interface have to do with DNS?

Get ADSL with a permanent IP address.
Install your own DNS servers at home.
Buy the O'Reilly DNS book.
Read the book and play with BIND until you do understand DNS.
Deploy your own DNS servers.
Get your ISP to enter an IN PTR record for your ADSL IP in their DNS.

Posted by UX-admin on December 12, 2008 at 03:12 PM GMT #

I had to setup BIND on Linux and according the "experts" it didn't work the way they said to do it. I found out how to do it by using the ProDNS site and looking at the errors in the log file and I got it to work: my own private DNS server for my computers.

Posted by Robert J on December 12, 2008 at 03:50 PM GMT #

I'm pretty sure that you can't do what you're thinking of since a CNAME isn't allowed to co-exist with any other RRs. Therefore, you can't have a CNAME record for a bare domain at the same time as NS, SOA, MX and all the other records you need/want on the actual domain.

Obviously, depends exactly what you're trying to do, but this kind of thing is never going to work:

example.com IN CNAME example.org

Ceri

Posted by Ceri Davies on December 12, 2008 at 08:07 PM GMT #

Hi all, thanks for the comments and for even just for reading...
Just for the record, I fixed my problem. My requirement was pretty simple:

[mydomain.com] resolves to [mydomain].blogger.com]

As I'd previously registered the domain through a domain broker, I had to use their own poxy control panel to make the DNS changes and then configure blogger to use the custom domain.

What I ended up with in my DNS settings was something like (probably not syntactically correct, but):

www IN CNAME ghs.google.com.
@ A [a google IP]
@ A [another google IP]

The ghs.google.com part is provided via the blogger help pages, but the A record IPs I managed to get from the real blogger status blog (http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/). I guess it's effectively hard-coding a static route or something, but it works.

Thanks for the suggestions. Just the thought of setting up my own DNS servers made me twitch...

Posted by Tim on December 15, 2008 at 01:40 PM GMT #

Post a Comment:

Name:
E-Mail:
URL:

Your Comment:

HTML Syntax: NOT allowed

© Tim Caynes. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Disclaimer: I work for Sun Microsystems, but this is nothing to do with them and it's all my fault, even though I might sometimes mention Solaris or something.

AddThis Feed Button
AddThis Social Bookmark Button
  • timcaynes.com »
  • twitter »
  • photopacity »
  • flickr »
  • linkedin »
twitter
  • oh, never mind
  • how wrong can you be
  • oi street view
  • its like a twix
  • peter docherty calamity shenanigan tryst
  • link to this
  • perfect rendition of myself
  • arrow over january
  • away from my desk %n
  • smile like you mean it
  • cracked h4x0rs
  • you really should finish that
  • lost last loss leaders
  • just put that over there
  • formula wan
  • do I understand DNS?
  • poke that in your eye
  • you must restart your computer
  • it'll never last
  • bored of internetshire
  • clouds and computing
  • subscription preamble canal
  • daft punk kills the messenger
  • thx jst IMing it now
  • oh yes life is complete
  • graphics hardware FAIL
  • spam @ mydomain
  • software update FAIL
  • LINUX Is coming
  • waiting for google street view
  • EXIF XMP HDR EXIT
  • travelogue 33
  • circular wordlement
  • travelogue 32
  • travelogue 31
  • travelogue 30
  • travelogue 29
  • travelogue 28
  • not since day one
  • lost profits
  • culture block
  • can't haz site
  • got film?
  • denied
  • 54 things
  • where's the adsense in that
  • omni present
  • social needle
  • naturally
  • can't advertise nothing on facebook
  • boxed madness
  • NME new noise tour
  • 4000 a minute
  • sacrilege
  • caught by the fuzz
  • dragonforce ahoy
  • you am demographic
  • facebook: you spammer you is
  • holy f**k
  • smiley animals
  • andy loves anthropomorphism
  • zac efron birthday bash
  • facebook stealth ads
  • daylight saving calamities
  • never mind
  • crashing down to google earth
  • google web decellerator
  • very frinteresting
  • flickr emptiness
  • skiptastic
  • dead cars
  • nearly cracked DRM
  • NME boredom
  • anonymous yes
  • I will never understand explore
  • sleeveface air porn bandwagon
  • amen to that
  • jazz mangle
  • recursive links for 2008-01-16
  • stitch up
  • a year of looking like someone's dad
  • watching the pigeon detectives
  • its a bit twangy
  • NME 2007
  • travelogue 30
  • poke the editors
  • travelogue 29
  • now entering madina lake
  • travelogue 28
  • that one instead
  • one long pair of eyes
  • there goes the ambulance
  • I'm from barcelona
  • supereminence
  • sleater-kinney presentation
  • surprisingly productive in loserville
  • shoot the drummer
  • cashback on apples
  • drivel dependence
  • if I think hard enough

Today's Page Hits: 152