Hi,
I setup an A record for a subdomain about 20 minutes ago (it's about 2:00 AM EST), and I setup a vhost in apache. Apache didn't complain when I restarted it, and the Linode Manager showed the A record as being there. However, up to a few minutes ago, trying to visit subdomain.example.com showed a server not found error, while example.com and mail.example.com both work fine. It seems to be connecting fine now, I am just wandering why there was about a 20 minute delay.

DNS manager changes for master zones are only refreshed every quarter hour (I think there's a note to that effect at the bottom of the editing page).

So one possibility is that you just missed the prior update when you made your change you could see a full 15 minute latency between an edit and it being live in the Linode servers.

The other possibility is that the update occurred more quickly (since, on average it should only take about half the quarter hour update cycle) but that you tested before it happened and your local DNS resolver - either your own or your ISPs - cached the negative response. Then, even once the Linode servers had new information you had to wait for your local resolver's negative cache entry to time out.

When in doubt, you can always directly query (with a tool like nslookup or dig) the Linode nameservers (ns1-ns5.linode.com) to see what data they have.

-- David

It didn't mention anything about the 15 minute wait. I just added another subdomain, there wasn't any note or message. It seems to be taking longer this time to show up. It could be that Linode changed the update interval (which probably isn't the case), or my ISPs DNS doesn't update as often. We should see soon if that's the case.

It seems my ISP updates it's DNS about once every hour. My subdomain from last night came into existance around 2AM and my new one from just a bit ago came into existance around 11AM (almost an hour).

Not sure about a brand new domain addition, but I just brought up the editing screen for an existing domain and at the bottom it shows:

so I think that's still the interval.

-- David

I guess I neeb to drush up on my reabing I was having my browser do a find for 15, fifteen, and min (for minute).

Anyway, it seems to be resolved. And now that it is, I can practice my reading skills by designing my site