Here is my zone rendered (domain/IPs redacted)

I'm trying to make the domain itself (domain.com) point to a CNAME and it doesn't seem to work. Most of the domains I have on Linode DNS are using A records to point to IPs, but I have a few I would like to point to CNAMEs and it doesn't seem to work here.

I migrated these in from Slicehost and it had the domain in there, it didn't work once here, so I tried @ and it wouldn't accept it and * and it doesn't seem to work...

; XXXXX.com [76587]
$TTL 86400
@   IN   SOA   ns1.linode.com. admin.XXXXX.com. (
               2010022179
               14400
               14400
               1209600
               86400 
            )
@      NS   ns1.linode.com.
@      NS   ns2.linode.com.
@      NS   ns3.linode.com.
@      NS   ns4.linode.com.
@      NS   ns5.linode.com.
@      86400   MX   0   mail.XXXXX.com.
XXXXX.com.      86400   TXT   "v=spf1 mx ptr ip4:###.###.###.### mx:mail.XXXXX.com -all"
mail      7200   A   ###.###.###.###
*            CNAME   my.cname.com.

You can't have a CNAME record alongside any other type of record, and the domain itself must have several other records, such as SOA and the NS records. Therefore, no CNAMEs.

You'll have to find some other way to accomplish what you want.

I've done this with every other DNS server I've used including MS DNS and Slicehost's DNS (MyDNS)... I'm surprised it doesn't work here. Maybe the other servers where not doing things "properly" and linode DNS is more strict... who knows.

Yeah, I remember someone else doing it at Slicehost and being surprised it didn't work at Linode. Nonetheless, it's not allowed.

(I should grep my IRC logs for the relevant RFC citation, but, honestly, I don't care enough. )

I googled around a bit and found some info and I think the RFC on it... Perhaps I should setup my own MyDNS servers or just keep a slice open at Slicehost... sigh...

As has been mentioned, you can not have an SOA record and a CNAME record for the same entry. This breaks the rules.

Some systems might accept a CNAME (without any SOA) but for something that's been delegated it could get confused (the domain has an NS glue record in the parent domain, and then returns a CNAME...umm).

Although it's potentially do-able, it's a misconfiguration. You're just asking for problems.

If I wanted two zones to be identical then I'd run my own BIND nameserver and have the two entries in my named.conf pointing to the same zone source file. Then, for all intents and purposes, they're two separate zones; they just happen to be configured identically.

_________________
Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

RFC 1034, section 3.6.2 states: "If a CNAME RR is present at a node, no other data should be present; this ensures that the data for a canonical name and its aliases cannot be different. This rule also insures that a cached CNAME can be used without checking with an authoritative server for other RR types."

RFC 1912, section 2.4 specifically reinforces: "A CNAME record is not allowed to coexist with any other data."

Since there's an SOA and at least one NS record for @ by necessity, a CNAME cannot be added for @ without violating that rule. This is a significant limitation of CNAMEs. If the target of the CNAME is under your control and/or is reasonably static, there's no need for a CNAME; if there is a need for a CNAME, you might be better off having the destination of the CNAME host the domain and keep it updated as things change.

If it's just "I have 100 domains that all point at the same place", look into the API... a couple nested for loops and you have a DNS search-and-replace, without having to deal with CNAMEs.

Wikipedia says, "the wild card is matched only when a domain does not exist, not just when there are no matching records of the type that has been queried for."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcard_DNS_record

So, the CNAME in the above example is not alongside any other records. If it's not allowed, this would be a bug in the Linode DNS Manager.

For wildcards, RFC 4592 section 3.3.3 revises RFC 1034 section 4.3.2 step 3 part C to clarify support of a wildcard CNAME. I did add an appropriate record through the DNS manager moments ago, and I have no reason to believe it won't work when I try it in a few moments.

However, worth noting is that *.example.com will not match example.com -- the * applies only to that level in the tree. It will also not match foo.bar.example.com.

EDIT: Yup, *.example.com CNAME example2.com returns CNAME example2.com for fritter.example.com.

Not at all. He tried @ first (which didn't work -- others have done a fine job of going over why), then tried * (which won't do what he wants -- Hoopy went over why -- but it is allowed). The example he pasted, I'm assuming, is the final try with *.

OP: If you run a nameserver on your Linode, like BIND or NSD, you can configure a slave domain in the Linode Manager which will AXFR/IXFR your zone from you and serve whatever you feed it. If you want to violate RFC with the CNAME, ns1-ns5 will happily serve your RFC-violating zone if they're configured as slaves to your master. (I'm pretty sure. Haven't tried.)

_________________
Disclaimer: I am no longer employed by Linode; opinions are my own alone.