Virtualmin and Domain registration and nameservers

[dion]

Hi,

Can anyone point me to any articles explaining how I can set up a server on virtualmin using this newly bought domain name from namecheap. Especially how I set up the nameservers on virtualmin.

Many thanks,
Dion

[calport]

Hello @dion and welcome to the community.

This might help you get started:

I can't configure my email

From what I have understood of our interaction thus far, I will tell you what I would have done on a fresh install of Virtualmin to get the result you want: Configure jordijuan.com, www.jordijuan.com vps.jordijuan.com ns1.jordijuan.com, ns2.jordijuan.com, mail.jordijuan.com, diania.tv, www.diana.tv and mail.diana.tv to point to the IP addresses (IPv4 and IPv6) of the VPS Install Virtualmin on VPS Set hostname to vps.jordijuan.com and set name servers to ns1.jordijuan.com and ns2.jordijuan.com …

[dion]

Hi @calport,

Thank you. Thank you for the reply. Maybe I should rephrase the question. How do I configure Virtualmin to host my domain I bought from namecheap without transferring the domain. I understand that I have to specify nameservers on the namecheap side, but how do I set the nameservers up on virtualmin(hosted on a VPS setup)? I have used ns1(and ns2).mydomain.co on the namecheap side and added them here under my virtual server - Server Configuration → DNS Records, and create a new “A - IPv4 Address” record for ns1.example.com and ns2.example.com

Have I missed something as it has been a day now and no propagation?

Cheers,
Dion

[calport]

It is as simple as simple can be. To get Virtualmin to host your domain:

1. use the Namecheap control panel to point the A record of the domain to the IP address of your Virtualmin server.

2. use the Namecheap control panel to create all the sub domains that I have mentioned in my previous message and point their A records to the IP address of your Virtualmin server

3. in Virtualmin, simply invoke the Virtualmin → Create Virtual Server and fill out the form

When you had installed Virtualmin, you had specified the name servers that Virtualmin will use in the Post-Install Wizard. You could run this Wizard again if you need to change those nameservers in light of any subdomains that you have created in step 2 above.

[Joe]

You’re missing glue records if you want your Virtualmin server (and its secondary DNS server, since you really want two) to be the authoritative server for your domain. You need to delegate authority for your zone(s) to the Virtualmin server (and its secondary). How you do that is specific to the registrar, but usually involves a “name servers” or “glue records” page in their UI. I think it’s called name servers in NameCheap.

That’s what Calport’s earlier link described, I think (though I haven’t read it, I see it mentions changing name servers).

If you don’t want Virtualmin to manage your DNS records, Calport’s second comment describes that.

It is not clear to me what you want. “Transfer” means transferring the domain to another registrar, which is not something Virtualmin has anything to do with. You would never need to transfer a domain to make Virtualmin authoritative for the zone (unless there’s some DNS registrar out there that doesn’t allow delegation, but I’ve never seen or heard of that).

Edit: Also, propagation usually only takes a few minutes for most users most of the time, an hour tops. You shouldn’t need to wait around for hours, unless you’re using your ISP DNS servers and they truly suck, or unless your registrar is slow to make changes (I believe NameCheap takes a few minutes, but you’ll have to check their docs to be sure…we aren’t the right people to ask NameCheap questions of, NameCheap has support and docs which is). You can check it by checking to see what the Google DNS servers think, as they don’t suck, and usually see root name server changes within a few minutes.

[dion]

Thanks Joe. I now have it working.