Hi there Virtualmin specialists.
I’v been using webmin for years and always used the registrar’s nameservers -> pointing A records to my servers IP address using virtual hosts. No problem there…
I discovered virtualmin to serve as Webhosting for my clients = great ! But i’m stuck with the vanity nameservers.
**replaced. (dots) by _(underscores) -> due to blocked by this forum
My server FQDN is
customit_3designs_be. -> reverse DNS OK
Registrar :
ns3.3designs_be ip of ns3.digitalocean_com
ns2.3designs_be ip of ns2.digitalocean_com
ns1.3designs_be ip of ns1.digitalocean_com
Digital Ocean Domain records
ns3.3designs_be directs to 198.41.222.173 (ip of ns3.digitalocean_com )
ns2.3designs_be directs to 173.245.59.41 (ip of ns2.digitalocean_com )
ns1.3designs_be directs to 173.245.58.51 (ip of ns1.digitalocean_com )
3designs_be directs to ns1.3designs_be.
3designs_be directs to ns2.3designs_be.
3designs_be directs to ns3.3designs_be.
VirtualMin nameservers during setup
primairy = ns1.3designs_be.
secondairy = ns2.3designs_be.
If I use online testing tools, there’s not much wrong of fails. All seem OK. But my website which is installed with Virtualmin is not resolving by name : 3designs_be. I can only access it via my server IP address 188.166.83.142
Have been looking for days, but can’t find why the virtual hosting is not working via Virtualmin.
Welcome to the community, @vanhims. Thanks for describing your domain configuration in great detail and offering your real domain and IP address for diagnosis, it enabled me to take a quick look at your DNS records and helped me understand your situation better. I don’t know why people attempt to obfuscate their domain names and IP addresses when seeking help here in 2020 when privacy is dead anyway.
Well, before I address the primary issue of getting 3designs.be resolve to the Virtualmin box, I would like to point out that Virtualmin’s web interface can be accessed from any domain / virtual server that is hosted on the Virtualmin box, thus: virtualserver.com:10000 or (if admin subdomain has been pointed to Virtualmin box’s IP) admin.virtualserver.com, which makes it much easier to type for lay people. You do not need to enter your IP address 188.166.83.142 in the browser (and bypass the security warning) every time you wish to access Virtualmin, @vanhims; just use the domain name of any of the virtual servers you host.
Now, about the matter of getting 3designs.be resolve to the Virtualmin box:
3designs.be will not direct to ns1.3designsbe. 3designs.be and www.3designs.be will point to 188.166.83.142. ns1.3designs.be will point to 188.166.83.142. ns2.3designs.be will point to 188.166.83.142.
Finally you could create admin.3designs.be and point it to 188.166.83.142 so that you would be able to access Virtualmin’s web interface by entering admin.3designs.be in the browser.
If all goes well, you will have 3designs.be resolving to its assigned virtual server configuration in Virtualmin and be able to use your vanity nameservers ns1 and ns2.3designs.be on current and future domains which you host on Virtualmin.
As a bonus, you will be able to admin Virtualmin via admin.3designs.be instead of having to use the IP address.
Thank you so much!!! You are very smart and nice for helping me out. It worked in 5mins ( after looking for 2 days ). I followed the tutorial from digitalocean and they recommend using the digitalocean nameservers as parent with Vanity nameservers. This was causing so much confusion for me. Your tip totally makes sense to me now!
So : Tell you registrar -> what your server IP is and the corresponding 2 custom nameservers. This will direct the domain name request to virtualmin on your server. It collects the request and then resolves the domain name + it takes care for all the extra A records.
So finally, my customers only have to add 2 lines in their registrar nameserver setup.
