Server unreachable without www

Question

My server is unreachable without "www." prefix, even when trying it with ping.

The DNS entry looks like this:

$TTL 86400
@   IN SOA ns1.first-ns.de. postmaster.robot.first-ns.de. (
    2011010600   ; serial
    14400        ; refresh
    1800         ; retry
    604800       ; expire
    86400 )      ; minimum

@                        IN NS      robotns3.second-ns.com.
@                        IN NS      robotns2.second-ns.de.
@                        IN NS      ns1.first-ns.de.

@                        IN A       1.2.3.4
localhost                IN A       127.0.0.1
mail                     IN A       1.2.3.4
www                      IN A       1.2.3.4
ftp                      IN CNAME   www
imap                     IN CNAME   www
loopback                 IN CNAME   localhost
pop                      IN CNAME   www
relay                    IN CNAME   www
smtp                     IN CNAME   www
@

A DNS record of the same type for another domain on the same server is working with and without "www".

And the VirualHost config looks like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName somewhere.com
        ServerAlias www.somewhere.com

</VirtualHost>

An nslookup for www.somewhere.com and somewhere.com shows different IPs! The wrong IP is from a former version of the DNS record. Maybe some DNS servers are not up to date, but I wonder why they are up to date with the www. version.

Any idea what could be wrong?

Increment the serial after adding the default record to the zone? can you ping somewhere.com? Or try nslookup or dig on somewhere.com and check the record. — Chris S, Jan 06 '11 at 19:39
Can you do an nslookup for the name both with and without? What response do you get back? — mrdenny, Jan 06 '11 at 19:41
Did you change your DNS recently? Check with your ISP (whoever "owns" the IP block your server is on). — USACASD, Jan 06 '11 at 20:10
This may help: http://serverfault.com/questions/219470/what-is-wrong-with-my-dns-entries — USACASD, Jan 06 '11 at 20:58
Maybe the change hasn't propagated? try an nslookup or dig directly against your nameserver — Michael Lowman, Jan 06 '11 at 21:00
Use a dig or nslookup and send dns query to AUTHORIZED DNS server — Ency, Jan 06 '11 at 21:03
@Ency not necessarily. knowing the output of the server is just as useful as knowing the state of the world, and could identify a problem such as a fail to reload the configuration file. — Michael Lowman, Jan 06 '11 at 21:22

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 06 '11 at 21:12

1

In addition to incrementing the serial, as Chris S said in a comment, one small step often overlooked by those who don't work with DNS routinely is telling the DNS server to reload the file.

answered Jan 06 '11 at 21:12

John Gardeniers

27,262
12
53
108

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 06 '11 at 21:33

0

As far as I know, you only need the A record for www to resolve.

Hostname  IP Address 
           1.2.3.4 
mail       1.2.3.4 
www        1.2.3.4

answered Jan 06 '11 at 21:33

c1tadel1

51
2

The problem is that the domain doesn't resolve _without_ www, not with it – Michael Lowman Jan 06 '11 at 21:39

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 07 '11 at 08:25

0

Since almost all answers came in form of comments, I have to repeat a comment to answer the question.

The solution was: Increment the serial after adding the default record.

answered Jan 07 '11 at 08:25

deamon

121
3

Server unreachable without www

3 Answers3