I am trying to move hosting server to linode. The most of domains on the server use my own name servers. I was told that linode cannot issue IP addresses any more so i cannot move name servers here. I can contact all clients and get them to change their name servers to linode's ones and I can import, one by one, all of their domains in linode DNS manager. When all that is done, clients still might want to add subomain or change MX record without contacting me every time. Is there a way to automatically update linode dns every time domain is updated through cpanel?

Why can't you make ns1/ns2.clientsdomain.com your Linode address?

You need IP address for each name server. Linode can give out only one.

No you don't. All of your client's nameservers can be different hostnames, yet resolve to the same IP.

Are you sure about that? I registered my name servers so long ago that something might have changed in a meantime. As far as i know each registered name server has to have its own IP address.

I'm sure.

[@l6 ~]$ whois derfy.net | grep ^Name
Name Server: NS1.DERFY.ORG
Name Server: NS2.DERFY.ORG
[@l6 ~]$ dig ns1.derfy.org +short
162.246.56.115
[@l6 ~]$ dig ns2.derfy.org +short
162.246.56.115
[@l6 ~]$

Ahh, so it did change. Great. It really made no sense before. It was meant to force you to have hosts on separate physical networks, but people still used them on the same system anyway. I can just setup bind on the server and use linode as a slave.

It is sensible to have separate nameservers, and I believe some domain registrars will not permit what derfy is describing.

If you use Linode's nameservers, you can use the API to update records. If Cpanel can be configured to run outside scripts, you could put one together to make sure authenticated users can only modify their own domains (giving them the API key would let them modify ANY domains on your account).

Note that Linode generates new zone files every 15 minutes, so changes cannot take effect any faster or more frequently than that.

I am looking in doing just this - using Cpanel hooks to update domains at linode dns