I’m setting up webmin/virtualmin on a VM on my new Cloud server with eukhost, I used the installer and all seemed to go well initially but I’m starting to think I might be in over my head.
I’m getting really confused with setting up the nameservers.
I have a domain name which I have pointed to ns1.mydomain.com and ns2.mydomain.com and then their corresponding IPs to point at my VM at the domain name registrar (123-reg).
I filled in the relevant info on the virtualmin installation wizard entering my domain name.
But when I look in Networking - Network Config - Hostname and DNS Client - I see the Hostname as the cloud host company, rather than my domain.
I confess to be properly lost when I look at this set-up screen. the DNS server is set to 127.0.0.1, 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4.
Well, DNS can be particularly confusing… once you get it working though, it generally stays out of your way
Here’s the question you need to figure out before we can determine which fork in the road to take here –
You have the option of using your Virtualmin server as the nameserver for all of your domains.
Or, you could use a third party service (such as your domain name registrar) for acting as the nameserver for your domains.
If your Virtualmin server is the nameserver for your domains – it’s a more setup work up front, but then you’re done with it afterwards.
If you use a third party – there’s little setup work, but you have to manually add DNS entries to that third party each time you add a domain to your system.
If you think you’d only ever have a handful of domains, that second option may make sense.
As this installation is more of an experiment, and I’m going to be adding multiple VMs, I think I would like to use Virtualmin as the Nameserver.
The host will do all the work for me if I use Cpanel/WHM, which I can see would be the quickest solution as I’m new to all this, but after looking into Virtualmin it seem to be the best route to go for me, so in this case it would probably be best to look at using it fully, then if I can’t get to grips with something I can scale back and use a third party.
But just in case what third party DNS/Nameserver companies would you recommend?
Would the wrong Hostname indicate the setup wizard didn’t work properly? I could always destroy the VM and start again.
But just in case what third party DNS/Nameserver companies would you recommend?
Most domain name registrars also provide free DNS service. I don’t have one in particular that I recommend – if they offer a DNS service, it would likely be fine.
Would the wrong Hostname indicate the setup wizard didn’t work properly
Not necessarily. And that’s easy to fix… you can just tweak that name in the Hostname and DNS client screen (be sure to set it to an FQDN, in “host.domain.com” format).
It’s possible that means your provider is resetting your hostname upon reboot though.
To see if the Virtualmin installer completed successfully, you can just take a peek at /root/virtualmin-install.log, and make sure the last couple of lines don’t include the word “FATAL ERROR”
I think I would like to use Virtualmin as the Nameserver.
A big portion of the nameserver setup occurs at your domain name registrar – you have to tell them that your server is a nameserver.
There are instructions on doing that here in the section named “How do I setup nameservers for my server”:
I had looked on WHM on my other WHM to see what was there, it said server.domain.co.uk. I had copied that but I’ve corrected it to www.domain.co.uk.
I have it setup with a virtual server now and it seems to be working.
Should it not have a primary domain though. For example the domain of the nameserver is now the first virtual server I made, but surely that should be the one for the primary Admin of Virtualmin or do I always login to the admin of virtualmin using the IP?
