Hello,

I just got apache setup on a new linode server and everything is working fine when I go to the site with the ip address but when I try to go with my domain name I just get website unavailable from my DNS. My domain (tachometer.us) has the name servers set as ns1.linode.com, ns2.linode.com and ns3.linode.com and I have set up the domain in my DNS Manager on linode. In the DNS Manager the domain zone is tachometer.us and the primary DNS is ns1.linode.com and the A/AAAA Records are (blank), mail and www all pointing to my linode IP.

I used the linode library for setting up the virtualhost in apache (https://library.linode.com/lamp-guides/ ... e-pangolin). I created /etc/apache2/sites-available/tachometer.us and filled it with this

<VirtualHost *:80>
  # Admin email, Server Name (domain name), and any aliases
  ServerAdmin matt@tachometer.com
  ServerName  www.tachometer.us
  ServerAlias tachometer.us

  # Index file and Document Root (where the public files are located)
  DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
  DocumentRoot /var/www/tachometer.us/public_html
  <Directory />
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
  </Directory>
  <Directory /var/www/tachometer.us>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
  </Directory>
  # Log file locations
  LogLevel warn
  ErrorLog  /var/www/tachometer.us/log/error.log
  CustomLog /var/www/tachometer.us/log/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

I then used a2ensite tachometer.us and reloaded and restarted apache. It has been a few days now and the domain still will not work. When I look up the whois for my domain the correct nameservers are there but if I try to do a reverse DNS lookup in linode I get this error "No match was found for 'tachometer.us'. Reverse DNS must have a matching forward entry that points to one of your IPs." which I'm not 100% why it isn't pointing to my IP. I know it can take a few days for a dns to update but I'm starting to think I may have configured something wrong. Can anyone help me get to the bottom of this?

Ok, I just bought a new domain name at a different registrar and did the entire set up again EXACTLY the same way as with tachometer.us and the domain is resolving and correctly pointing to my website. Reverse DNS is working on the new domain as well. I guess there is just something wrong with the tachometer.us domain and I'll just continue using the new one. The domains are just for testing the new server and it isn't a big deal if I can't use them.

That first line contains the most likely culprit. You need to create both an A record and an AAAA record for tachometer.us, http://www.tachometer.us, and mail.tachometer.us for Apache to be able to serve them. The A records should point to an IPv4 address and the AAAA records should point to an IPv6 address. Both the IPv4 and IPv6 addressess can be found in the Remote Access tab of your Linode Manager.

_________________
Kris the Piki Geeker

I do have IPv4 records there are three listed in the DNS manager:
Hostname: (blank hostname)
IP Address: 198.58.111.32
TTL: Default

Hostname: mail
IP Address: 198.58.111.32
TTL: Default

Hostname: www
IP Address: 198.58.111.32
TTL: Default

but I don't see any IPv6 records. And the DNS Manager on the checkline.biz domain is the same as tachometer.us but I can see my website with that domain.

It looks like you may have allowed the tachometer.us domain name to expire. Its current status is "client hold" and the authoritative servers for the .us TLD are no longer serving your NS records. You'll probably need to contact your registrar if you wish to keep using this domain for anything.

So you do have the A records, then?

The AAAA records are needed for IPv6 access to your website. Whether or not you need them depends on whether or not you want to allow access to IPv6-only clients.



whois shows that the domain does not expire until March 2014 and that the DNS servers point to the ones provided by Linode.

_________________
Kris the Piki Geeker

Whois shows that the domain would point to Linode's nameservers if the domain status was not "client hold". However, since the status is "client hold", the authoritative nameservers for the .us TLD aren't actually returning any NS records for the domain, which you can verify by querying them directly, as with "dig tachometer.us NS @a.cctld.us".

Registrars often automatically renew domains after they expire to give the original owners a chance to renew them for real (before they become available for others to register). The domain can still be "expired" in the sense that it will not work correctly until you pay the registrar to renew the domain even if the expiration date listed in whois is for sometime in the future.