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I have a domain - mydomain.com - and I would like to use Linode for my DNS service so I have full control over any subdomains and MX records I might need.

Linode DNS servers:

ns1.linode.com
ns2.linode.com
...
ns5.linode.com

I have recently signed up with an online community and they want me to use their in-house DNS:

ns1.theirdns.com
ns2.theirdns.com

When you create a zone record on Linode, it automatically adds it's name servers, and you cannot remove them from the NS Records list. I tried switching my DNS from online community back to Linode and adding their DNS to the bottom of NS Records list but that made my site inaccessible.

The other DNS options available on a zone record on Linode are:

  • MX Records (not useful for this purpose)
  • A/AAAA Records
  • CNAME Records
  • TXT Records
  • SRV Records

I would like to know if there is a way for me to configure the Linode DNS to pass through my base site (mydomain.com) and www.mydomain.com to the online community DNS servers, or am I pretty much stuck with using their DNS?

jbmoon
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1 Answers1

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First, an editorial: Forcing you to use their DNS servers makes me make the frowny face.

That's out of the way...

You're pretty much stuck using theirs. It comes down to resolving 'example.com'. A record like that has to be an A record, not a CNAME. There are good reasons for that. If only they can know what the IP address of the specific machine is, they have to host the A record. And that means hosting the DNS zone.

The same mechanic works in Amazon AWS. An Elastic Load Balancer can have any IP address. Yet, when you define the record in their DNS service (Route53), you do so as an A record referring to the ELB. They can do this because they wrote their DNS servers and can serve the right IP address every time it is requested. It's that 'can change without notice' feature that forces this, otherwise you could host the A record in your own DNZ zone.

The 'www' can be a CNAME no problem.

Community
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sysadmin1138
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  • I kind of figured that. They use Amazon to host their web service. I want to use their web services, I would just be happier if I had the DNS under my control. Thank you for taking time to answer :) – jbmoon Sep 18 '16 at 04:25