Zone wheretheshowsare.com/IN: NS 'host.wheretheshowsare.com' has no address records (A or AAAA)

Virtualmin
1
SYSTEM INFORMATION
OS type and version Ubuntu Linux 24.04.2
Webmin version 2.303
Virtualmin version 7.30.8
Webserver version apache2
Related packages SUGGESTED

Hello…

I’ve had to move a very large website from my old server to a new one. I ran the Virtualmin backup software and when I restored it on the new server I got this error

The following errors were found in the records file /var/lib/bind/wheretheshowsare.com.hosts ..

zone wheretheshowsare.com/IN: NS 'host.wheretheshowsare.com' has no address records (A or AAAA)
zone wheretheshowsare.com/IN: not loaded due to errors.

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It is inheriting the settings from the old server but I’m not sure what to do to correct it on the new server. The nameserver refers to the old server (and is still active there since I have not moved that yet)

Virtualmin re-check will not work because of the BIND error. This happened on another website move too and I manually moved everything which took a long time. I’m sure there is a more effective solution!

Thanks for your help in advance!

Dan Lewis

2

You need to add address records or remove that NS record. If that is a name server you’ll be using for this zone, you need to add address records (A for IPv4 and/or AAAA for IPv6). If it is not, you need to remove the NS record.

3

I’m guessing you chose to include the system hostname (assuming host.wheretheshowsare.com is the system hostname Virtualmin is running on) as one of the name servers Virtualmin automatically uses when adding a virtual server. When you do that, we’re assuming your hostname resolves. You would have had to tell Virtualmin to skip checking for resolvability when you chose that during the setup wizard, since we try to protect against this problem, but we trust you’ll make it resolve eventually.

You don’t need to use the Virtualmin server as one of your name servers, but it’s a common choice in a small-scale deployment like the sort most people using Virtualmin are building. And, you don’t need to use the system hostname for that, but it’s a common choice, so that’s what we default to.

All of this is configurable, but if you’re including the system hostname as one of your DNS servers, it must resolve. If that name is in one of the zones managed locally, then you’ll need an A record for it in that zone, and it won’t be automatically generated by Virtualmin (unless you’re doing something complicated and have added it to Server Templates to do something custom).

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Thanks for your advice Joe. I’m not sure I understand just what to do.

The purpose of this server is to act as a backup to my main server. I was hoping to set it up so that if I had a failure of the server https://wheretheshowsare.com was actually hosted on I could just change over to this one while I fixed whatever was wrong with the original.

I’ve deleted the name server as you suggested and now it’s coming up with an error that there is no nameserver. When I asked it to check the DNS here is the report it provided.

zone wheretheshowsare.com/IN: has no NS records
zone wheretheshowsare.com/IN: not loaded due to errors.
_default/wheretheshowsare.com/IN: bad zone

I’m not sure where to go from here. I had the same problem when I tried moving another of my servers and I’d like to create a backup of that one too so it’s worth knowing how to fix this error.

I’m sorry if I sound a little dense! All these details can be mind boggling but they all are fairly simple once you sort them out!

Dan Lewis

What should I put in place of these zone errors? and where are they located?

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You need NS records, and they need to be the right ones and they need to resolve (have address records somwhere). So what are your name servers for this zone? Those need to be added as NS records to the zone.

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I don’t have a nameserver yet but I can create one. Give me a few minutes and I’ll do it. It usually takes about 20 minutes for it to resolve.

I happened to think though… I don’t want to change the nameserver on wheretheshowsare.com because it’s a production website. So if I create a nameserver won’t I need to change the nameserver on wheretheshowsare.com to have it work?

I’ve put websites on other servers without doing this and they seem to work. I just need to make all the DNS changes at the registrar rather than in Virtualmin.

Ultimately if the main server were to crash I could assign the nameserver to this one. But just to have a temporary spot to put the files in the event of a crash I wouldn’t want to rename the nameserver for the domain.

Is there a way to make Virtualmin work without doing that?

Dan Lewis

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That’s not necessary and is not what this is about. The NS records can point to whatever name servers you are using (e.g. at your registrar or at a cloud DNS providers).

This error is about exactly and only what it says: NS records.

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Without doing what? I don’t know what you’re trying to do or what you’re trying to not do.

Just fix your NS records.

If you want to host your own DNS, you can do that, too, but that’s a different question and a different problem for a new topic.

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Actually, though, if you’re not managing local DNS with Virtualmin for any domains (not just this one), this shouldn’t even come up because you should disable the DNS feature in Features and Plugins.

And, if you aren’t hosting DNS locally managed by Virtualmin for this domain (but are for others) you should disable the DNS feature for this domain.

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I guess I’m not understanding this for some reason. I’ll just do what you tell me and then I’m sure I’ll learn after doing it one time

I’ll go in and create a nameserver and point it at the ip address that the server is on then hopefully you can tell me what I need to do to get this to work.

Yes, I would like to set it up so the nameservers do work.

I’ll message you back as soon as the nameserver is set up.

Dan Lewis

11

OK. The nameserver is set up. ns1.wheretheshowsare.net and ns2.wheretheshowsare.net are both pointing at my IP address 74.50.69.147

This server is actually behind a router. It’s local address is 192.168.1.101 I believe I have forwarded all the appropriate ports.

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Now I just need to know what to do next. It’s 5:33 pm est time here in Florida. I imagine within the next 15-20 minutes this will be active.

I’m not trying to be difficult here… I’m just trying to understand how this works.

Dan Lewis

12

First: You should not host DNS yourself if you only have one server. You should let your registrar or some cloud service host your DNS.

But, if you do want to host DNS locally, even though it’s a bad idea:

If you’re going to hosting and managing DNS locally, you need to set the glue records at your registrar to point to your server. How you do that depends on your registrar, some make it easier than others…this particular configuration, where you’re making your name servers point to addresses within the zone itself is the trickiest path, as you have to spring the zone into existence out of nothing.

Though, I guess that’s not what’s actually happening here, as I see you already have glue records pointing to ns1/ns2.workbooksonline.com:

$ whois wheretheshowsare.net|grep 'Name Server'
Name Server: ns1.workbooksonline.com
Name Server: ns2.workbooksonline.com

You may be able to modify the glue records at your registrar directly and add name and IP at the same time. But, most don’t allow that.

So, the first step in that case is to make sure you have A records for ns1.wheretheshowsare.net and ns2.wheretheshowsare.net on those servers, as you probably can’t add IP addresses directly at your registrar, you can probably only change it to the names…and the names need to resolve with the current DNS servers (the workbooksonline.com ones).

There currently aren’t A records on those servers:

[joe@kate workflows]$ host ns1.wheretheshowsare.net
Host ns1.wheretheshowsare.net not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
[joe@kate workflows]$ host ns2.wheretheshowsare.net
Host ns2.wheretheshowsare.net not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

Once you can resolve those addresses, you can then change the glue records at your registrar (confusingly sometimes just labeled “name servers” or “name server records”) to point to the new ones.

Note all of the stuff you’ve already done is also necessary. The zone needs to be correct and complete for it to work as the name server.

13

Hi Joe…

As always… thank you for all your help!

The zone problem is solved! All I needed to do is to go into the DNS Bind server and change the hostname. On the other server the hostname was server.wheretheshowsare.com and on the backup system the hostname was host.wheretheshowsare.com

Once I entered in the correct hostname in both the nameserver and then in the address section of the DNS Bind server everything worked like a charm and it all come right back as it should!

I assume when you download the files from the original server and then put them on another server it doesn’t automatically use the hostname of the new server. It’s easily solved once you realize what needs to be done!

Thanks again!

Dan Lewis

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