DNS entry to resolve to an external IP

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I’ve been a silent user of Virtualmin for about 6 years now! But I only started using BIND DNS server last night. BIND is running perfectly on my server and all my domains are resolving.

Now, what I want to do is very simple: I’d like my DNS to resolve a non-existing subdomain of one of my domains to an outside IP address (for example resolve myhome.domain.com to the static IP of my home network).

Why do I want to do this? So that from outside home I could do (e.g.) ssh myhome.domain.com rather than ssh 111.222.33.44 (assuming that’s the static public IP of my home’s network).

How can I achieve this?

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The simplest would be to just add a DNS record on the domain you want to use - this is done under Server Configuration -> DNS Records.
Just click Create Record of Type (A) -> enter what you want to use as subdomain and the IP address of your home network.

Or were you thinking of something else?

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Yes, correct. However you might not want to advertise your home IP address publicly, and could use local /etc/hosts file (on PC from which you’re trying to access your remote, home server).

#/etc/hosts
127.0.0.1     localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4
::1           localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6

111.222.33.44 myhome.domain.com
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Of course, that is also an option.
Or, if using linux, add an entry in .ssh/config

Host myhome
HostName 11.22.33.44
User myuser

But adding an A record is simpler if you also want to be able to connect from different computers from time to time. :slight_smile:

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Awesome guys, thanks for your help!

Wow talk about overthinking it. Duh… of course the simple way is to add the A-record! (I don’t know why I wasn’t realizing it!!).

The solution with the host file is valid, but as toreskev pointed out I want to switch from computer to computer from time to time.

Also, creating entries in ~/.ssh/config is exactly what I’ve been using thus far. But since I started using my own DNS server I thought why not just give it a public name.

Thanks again, I added the A record and it’s working as intended.

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