How can you test CloudFlare without changing your domain's name server?
I would not want to change my domain's name server and wait hours for propagation only to find out there is a issue with the DNS settings.
Can you spoof a nameserver or something on a local hosts file?
Yes, you should be able to test before you change your name servers. Here's what to do:
Signup at https://www.cloudflare.com/sign-up and complete the signup through Step 4 when you're asked to update your name servers.
Note the two name servers you are provided which will be in the format [name].ns.cloudflare.com.
From a terminal, do a lookup to get the IP addresses your domain has been assigned. In Linux/Unix it'd be: dig #[name].ns.cloudflare.com yourdomain.example
Repeat step 3 with all the subdomains you want to check.
Update your localhost record to resolve the domain(s) to the IPs you found with the lookup.
Browse the site from the same machine where you did the localhost update and traffic should pass through CloudFlare.
While this will work for a while, after 24 hours CloudFlare's system may detect that your name servers haven't updated and, in some cases, may return an error. However, this technique should allow you basic testing before you update your name servers.
To save future users from some headache, the above answer doesn't work anymore: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/ip-on-cloudflare-nameserver-is-not-masked-despite-orange-cloud/76137
From my understanding, you now need to change your nameserver.
Related
I have access to a Godaddy account where the company has all their domains. One of those I need to point to another web server running Apache. The person that used to work here before me solved this pointing to the new server IP using the record:
A # the.ip.addr.ess 1 hour
and in the webserver end I get it with Apache and as far as the webserver goes, it runs flawlessly. I even have some subdomains using the same A record structure.
But...now I have two issues. First, I lost email reception. I can send via smtp and webmail but anything sent to my domain gets bounced back after 24 hours, even if sent to an alias or forwarder.
The second issue is that I need to verify the domain with Firebase and even thou I created the TXT record, it cannot be found by Google. I'm sure it's because of the same reason.
What can I do? I understand a little about DNS and records, but not enough for this. I just want all html traffic to reach my webserver as it is now and keep the emails and other domain services working as they were.
As contacting Godaddy support, they said it is not their purview as it is external. I think they just don't know. Go figure.
Are you using GoDaddys NameServers? If not and these are pointing elsewhere no matter what DNS records you set in GoDaddy won't be picked up during DNS lookips. This may explain why the TXT record verification is failing. However if this was true changing the A record wouldn'd disrupt DNS.
# just means the root domain so no subdomain/prefix, mydomain.com.
www is a common subdomain used so you could have an A record which like:
A www the.ip.addr.ess 1 hour
so www.mydomain.com would resolve to the.ip.addr.ess
MX records are used to direct emails to your mail server. Make sure this is pointing to the mail server. If it's pointing at your A record then updating the A record will disrupt this.
Set the MX record to point to the.ip.addr.ess rather then mydomain.com, or an A/CNAME record other then your root domain (which you are updating)
Other considerations may need to be taken, if you have an SPF record (TXT record) this may also need updating, depending on it's current value.
I finally found what I had to do. I needed an A record named 'mail' pointing to the original Godaddy server IP address.
A mail my.ip.add.ress. 1 hour
Thank´s for all the help.
My website suddenly stopped working.
When I search for the domain name in WHOIS websites it is showing the correct server ip address and correct DNS IP address.
I can reach the website by its IP address but somehow when I am trying the domain name in browser its not working and its showing "This site can’t be reached"!
There is no error in my server log.
I tried different browsers and different systems and it is same issue.
I am really confused. Even when I am sending GET requests with Postman to my domain, it not reachable but sending request to IP is working!
whois and DNS resolution are two separate things and one does not imply anything for the other, so in short, except in very specific cases, if you have a DNS resolution problem you should use DNS troubleshooting tools, not the whois and especially not web-based whois (the only relevant whois is the registry one).
Now you are giving so few details that noone can really help.
Among the possible ideas to check and probable problems:
you forgot to renew the domain, your registrar put it on hold or worse deleted it (that you can see in whois)
you did a change in the DNS resolution and now it does not work anymore, use online troubleshooting tools like Zonemaster or DNSViz; alternatively your registrar and/or webhosting company should be able to help (since you are neither giving here the domain name nor details about the troubleshooting you do: for DNS problems, the browser is not the first tool to use, look instead at dig).
in appear that the problem was DNS on our local system. we changed it to 8.8.8.8 and then we could access to our domain!
it's usually because you use an addon domain, not the main domain for hosting orders that are set up on cpanel whm
everyday i get following email from the cpanel, i dont know what it means and in current configuration, i have a one ip for a ns1.nameserver and one for ns2.nameserver but top level domain nameserver is mapped to one ip address. but there is no way to add a another A record to there (i dont knw how) or i want to disable this notice out, since still all works fine in the network...
The hostname (nameserver.com) resolves to 67.xxx. It should
resolve to 67.xxxx. Please be sure that the contents of
/etc/hosts are configured correctly, and also that there is a
correct 'A' entry for the domain in the zone file.
Some or all of these problems can be caused by /etc/resolv.conf
being setup incorrectly. Please check that file if you believe
everything else is correct.
You may be able to automatically correct this problem by using the
'Add an A entry for your hostname' option under 'Dns Functions' in
your Web Host Manager.
Two ways to resolve the issue.
Add the correct A record for the IP and Fully Qualified Domain name
Per cPanel it is not suppose to function behind a NAT though as many have found this does in fact work. So you can "Fix" or stop this message by going into the contact manager and disable the “Ip address dns check” option
You need to make sure that you have properly added A record for your hostname and assigned it to IP address of your server. For example, if your server hostname is xyz.abcd.com then you need to add xyz A record in abcd.com DNS zone and point it to your server IP address.
I currently have my own domain name and dedicated server and I offer different packages to my clients. What I want to be able to do is have them sign up with my website and create a package automatically that they can access via their username as a subdomain e.g.
http://yourusername.mywebsite.com
I currently have DNS entries set up for various subdomains with real information for my website e.g.
Name Type IP Address
# A 1.2.3.4
bugs A 1.2.3.4
support A 1.2.3.4
However, if a new customer signs up at the moment I have to go and manually create an entry for them with their username in it.
I'm sure I've seen websites that manage to do this automatically, does anyone have any ideas how, or any other methods that I should be using?
Thanks,
Mark
Since you apparently do not control the name servers, your choices are quite limited. One possibility is to use a wildcard DNS record:
* A 192.0.2.1
where the star will replace every name. Not ideal (inexisting domains will also appear).
The details depend on which DNS server you're using.
One approach is to have some code that opens the DNS zone file and adds the desired records. On Linux with Bind, you will then need to signal the server to get it re-read the zone file.
With Simple DNS Plus, you can easily add such a DNS record through the included HTTP API. For example:
http://127.0.0.1:8053/updatehost?host=yourusername.mywebsite.com&data=1.2.3.4
Since you apparently do not control the name servers, your choices are quite limited. Nevertheless, every serious DNS hoster provide you with a API (see for instance Slicehost's API). So, you may use this API and write a small program to update the DNS data.
(Foot note: handling paying customers when you do not even control the name servers seem... bad)
I was wondering if it's possible to dynamically add subdomains that point to dynamic IP addresses, and how I would go about doing that? In other words, "how is dyndns/no-ip implemented" :-)? (The part I don't get is adding/changing the DNS entries... I understand how the client sends a packet every few minutes -___-). I can tell all my users to just use DynDNS/No-IP, of course, but having it integrated with the application would be much cooler.
Thanks,
Robert
To be able to directly update/control where a domain/subdomain resolves to, you must have your own name server. When you register a domain under a TLD (for example, .com), that TLD has a nameserver. Anytime a client needs to look up the IP to something.com, they ask the .com nameserver where to find the nameserver for something. That nameserver in turn returns data about the domain or subdomain.
When you register a domain at a place like GoDaddy or Network Solutions, and you use their online tools to point your various subdomains to IP addresses, you are creating entries on their nameserver. When a client requests your domain, the root nameserver tells them to check with GoDaddy's nameserver. If you look through the configuration options of your registrar, you'll generally find a place to specify your own nameserver instead of entering domain IPs. Setting that will tell the chain of nameservers to defer resolution of your subdomains to that nameserver. Obviously at that point, having direct control over the mechanism of name-address resolution, you can do whatever you like.
Here's one list of open-source name servers. There are many others, ranging from free OSS to custom, proprietary and very expensive. Technically you could also write your own, as BIND is a public, standard format.
As you've partially said, the way DynDNS and other dynamic IP services work is that they update their server's DNS records based on a heartbeat from a client every few minutes.
The trick is that they use extremely short TTL times so that caches for the record expire very quickly and need to re-query the DynDNS server (which makes dynamic IP changes propagate quickly).
If you wanted to implement this, either find a DNS host that offers an API, or programatically update the DNS on your own server with a short TTL.