Help with Cloudmin, Webmin/Virtualmin DNS Hell

Help! (Home for newbies)
1

OK, so I have been chasing after what I would say is a simple and logical setup for over a year now and am at my wits end. First I like the products, but there are lots of issues with them that can put a stop to their usefulness. I posted about the fact Cloudmin would not install OpenVZ containers and an OS image without upon a reboot it changing its RAM to something entirely different. I got no explanation, so I learned how to do it manually in the CLI. I still don’t know if that is fixed. I could go on and on, but it serves no purpose toward getting assistance and answers, just keep in mind I am by no means a Linux Newbie, nor am I World’s greatest super user - but usually given enough time, I arrive at what I need. That is all but my Cloudmin-Virtualmin/Webmin setup - “yes all licensed ‘Pro’ versions…” So, I will below outline something that should be painfully simple, but that I cannot get it to work at all. Below is ny objective. Here are my specs, Centos 6.8 running OpenVZ’s kernel and with one HW node and three OpenVZ containers all with Centos6.8 and with Webmin/Virtualmin installed.

OK this should only take a person an hour or so to complete - and yet after a year messing around I can’t take much more. Oh, everything is on one large dedicated server I own.

The HW node is running Cloudmin and the three containers are running Virtual/webmin. This is what I require:

Cloudmin should work to make containers, and install a CentOS image. Maybe things have changed, and I will try to get a reference to my old post, but no one responded with an actual answer and I have seen nothing else about the failure that is associated with allocating RAM here on the forums. (Original post about Cloudmin) —>

https://www.virtualmin.com/node/38510

So as a package this is what I want and think should be possible.

Cloudmin running on the HW (Base Centos 6.8 physical install) using current OpenVZ kernel.
Three containers - each one holding a Webmin/Virtualmin install

In reality if it is right or not I do indeed have that part of the configuration installed - yet obviously something is wrong.

Cloudmin hardware hostname = control.server.com
I would like Cloudmin to be the master DNS server, but at this point since I cannot get any of the cluster DNS set-ups to work right, I will not be picky which systems is master and which are slaves, JUST SO LONG AS THEY WORK and propagate down from master to slave.

Here lies some confusion that may or may not matter. My HW node hostname is “control.server.com” I also want to run a site at “server.com” I don’t know what I am supposed to name what and Cloudmin does not want to cooperate with any of the three Web/Virtualmin’s DNS.

The Virtualmin servers are named like this:

carbon1.server.com

carbon2.server.com

carbon3.server.com

So I planned to run 3 name servers. Assuming someone fixed the issue with Cloudmin installing stuff, I wished to have this sort of logic with my DNS setup.

Cloudmin->
control.server.com —> Master DNS **ns1.server.com

carbon1.server.com —> Slave to control.server.com **ns2.server.com

carbon2.server.com —> Slave to control.server.com **ns3.server.com

carbon3.server.com —> Slave to control.server.com

OR, this would be fine too.

Cloudmin->
control.server.com —> NO DNS

carbon1.server.com —> Slave to any DNS master **ns1.server.com

carbon2.server.com —> Slave to any DNS master **ns2.server.com

carbon3.server.com —> Slave to any DNS master **ns3.server.com

I am not sure about this second setup as it might require me to keep this server local and I have not made up my mind on whether I will host everything or if a friend with a datacenter might do so. The domains on the servers for the most part are not commercial - they are merely for my own projects. But come a year later and seeing how great Cloudmin, Virtualmin and Webmin are yet being unable to set up DNS makes all of this worthless. Also I have no idea if Cloudmin’s RAM failure has been addressed (see above…)

Can anyone offer some help please?

2

Have you looked at the Cloudmin Services feature?

https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/cloudmin#toc-cloudmin-services-1NF6EawO

This allows you to easily have a central DNS server; you’d also need to setup a slave, which could be any server with Webmin on it.

3

Funny you mention that to me as I looked at it for the first time today and thought, “This looks like what I need, but why did I not need it before?” I will try and set it up, but I am quite sure this sounds crazy, but can you tell me why I have to use something new now? I had no issues droping this on a commercial VPS with just Webmin/Virtualmin. Used ns1 as the master and ns2 as the slave. That worked fine and I was on top of the World before a tragic data disaster that left me with no VPS’s and no data. I am now a CentOS IT master thanks to nonstop failure, and it has been a year almost pissing around with Virtualmin/Webmin and feeling stupid nothing works as it should. I can also say I am still not sure a person can even use Cloudmin to make containers and Virtual OS’s - it had two problem areas and one (installing any image) was fatal. The other just changed the RAM whenever you rebooted. I will try now and set that module up. I surely can do no worse than failure.

4

OK, I don’t know do I manage Cloudmin and all of the Webmin/Virtualmin servers from here? Should my first system be my Cloudmin system that is “host” to the three “guest” OpenVZ container running Web/Virtualmin?

Maybe you just need to tell me where to go to look at more documentation as all your link shows me to is how to install it and it is already on the host Cloudmin system… I suppose I can just goof around with it - again I can do no worse than fail. That has gotten old though…

5

Wow, this looks easy! In a related note, is there any way to fix a Webmin/Virtualmin install that is not displaying another server for clustering DNS?

6

It has always been possible to have DNS slaves synced up to your Virtualmin hosts, and have them automatically populated with new zones (and there’s docs for that in there somewhere too), but the benefit of Cloudmin Services is that you no longer need BIND to be running at all on the Virtualmin system (though you can, if you want it to be one of the slaves).

The goal of Cloudmin Services is to simplify your Virtualmin systems. If you have more then a couple of Virtualmin systems, or if you really want to centralize as much as possible, it allows pushing DNS (in particular, but it also supports some of the heavy mail processing, and databases; though you need really fast networking for those services) onto a different system. It doesn’t have to be the Cloudmin system. We have dedicated DNS VMs for our servers, which Cloudmin Services manages; those servers just need Webmin and BIND on them and Virtualmin always talks to the Cloudmin server and doesn’t need to really know much about the slaves.

Setup is maybe slightly more complex than setting up Virtualmin as its own DNS server and a slave, but since you wanted DNS to be on the Cloudmin host, Cloudmin Services is the right way to get there.

“I can also say I am still not sure a person can even use Cloudmin to make containers and Virtual OS’s - it had two problem areas and one (installing any image) was fatal.”

So, it looks like you have Cloudmin Connect, which does not have VM/container management features (but, does have Cloudmin Services, and all of the Virtualmin related features). If you just have one host machine, you can use Cloudmin GPL to manager your virtual machines; GPL is limited to one type of virtualization (for the time being; though we’ll likely merge Docker and other containers into GPL alongside KVM).

Though the behavior you’re describing makes it sound like you are using a version of Cloudmin that does manage VMs and it’s just not working right (you wouldn’t see the VM creation menu items if you just have the version for managing Virtualmin systems).

7

I’m not sure what your question means, but I’m sure it can be fixed. :wink:

Have you seen the docs on Slave DNS configuration? While the Virtualmin portion wouldn’t matter, if you’re using Cloudmin Services but setting up slave configuration is the same in Webmin, no matter what (and, that’s where most of the work happens, either in Virtualmin or Cloudmin Services).

https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/dns/slave-configuration