Hi, I am quite new to Virtualmin and I need help!
I set up Virtualmin on an Ubuntu 10.04 using the default settings on a a VMWare machine on my home network (behind a NAT) and I host 5 registered domains, (i.e. mydomain1.com, mydomain2.net, mydomain3.name, etc.)
The problem I have is that I can access my web pages and receive emails ONLY if I set the domains as fix IP at the Registrars administration pages, with the need to manually update my IP number any time it changes.
All attempts to use domain name servers dealing with dynamic DNS (I chose NO-IP.COM) failed!!!
I am totally unfamiliar with DNS and my researches on Google and the Forum pages did not help.
Is anybody aware of a How-to guide (for dummies) which I can use to set up my system correctly?
Thank you in advance for your help.
George
You need to separate the functions of domain name registration and DNS.
When you register your domain name some (many?) registrars include DNS as part of the package. On your registrar's control panel your will probably see the name servers identified as NS1.registrarname.com, NS2.registrarname.com (or something similar) and they will be set to the IP addresses of your registrar's name servers.
You account with no-ip.com will follow and update their name servers (something like NS1.no-ip.com, NS2.no-ip.com) with the current address of your servers updating their DNS entries when the IP address changes.
The problem is that when I (a third party) go to find your domains, I will ask your registrar where to get the addresses for your domain and it will say to go to NS1.registrarname.com. These will still have whatever fixed IP address you put in there last (as you have pointed out). It doesn't know to tell me to go to no-ip.com to find the appropriate address for your webserver.
The resolution is to log into your registrar's control panel and update the domain name servers entries to change them from NSx.registrarname.com to NSx.no-ip.com (updated for the appropriate names specified by no-ip.com).
Hope that helps.