[resolved] DNS forwarding help

Destry · 2015-05-11 06:30:45

I always get the semantics wrong when talking about DNS stuff, so please forgive my ignorance but hopefully you’ll see what I’m trying to do.

I have two domains with one web host (i.e., same IP). One is an old domain eventually being replaced by the other. (We’ll call them old.tld and new.tld.)

I manage DNS records for old.tld using DNS Made Easy (DNSME) because it requires using aliases for content at an external server (x.tld), and DNSME was an easy way for me to manage that at the time. The DNS for new.tld are managed with the web host directly and there is no complicated external alias pointing necessary.

But now I want calls to anything at old.tld, except the external aliases to x.tld, to point to new.tld for a while until the old domain is retired later.

My question is how to achieve that via DNS handling?

I’m guessing it involves creating a CNAME record at DNSME in the zone records for old.tld. So something like this…

Name                         Type                         Alias to
old.tld                      CNAME                        new.tld.

Does that make sense?

If I don’t add the dot at the end of new.tld. it appends the old domain to the new (i.e., new.tld.old.tld, which can’t be correct.

ruud · 2015-05-11 08:15:03

@                      CNAME                        new.tld.

or

old.tld.                      CNAME                        new.tld.

or

                      CNAME                        new.tld.

Depends on how their interface works. Normally I’d use the first, but I suspect you have to use the third one.

I’m not sure if a CNAME is what you want. The visitors would still see old.tld and the server that handles new.tld would have to be configured to also accept calls for new.tld

Destry · 2015-05-11 08:25:17

Thanks, ruud!

I was wondering if there was a wild card thingy to use or not. Unfortunately, DNSME doesn’t allow any of those options. If I try to add a dot after the old name, I get an error about not being able to do it. Likewise, I can’t leave the field blank, nor use a symbol.

But I can get this, only…

old.tld            CNAME            new.tld.

That’s been up for about an hour now using TTL: 1800, and so far it’s not working.

I put in a support ticket with DNSME, but I probably won’t hear from them until later tonight.

Destry · 2015-05-11 09:01:26

Just heard from DNSME. Apparently they handle it using an HTTP record, which is somewhat contrary to all the info I’ve read online about this kind of situation, but there you go.

So now I’m just waiting to see if it works. I set the TTL to 5 seconds, but so far nothing.

ruud · 2015-05-11 09:23:06

There is no such thing as a HTTP record in DNS. I suspect that what they do is simply a HTTP 30x redirect. In that case the visitors will enter old.tld, but are redirected to new.tld.

Destry · 2015-05-11 09:28:11

Yeah, probably. Again, I never really know how to talk about this DNS stuff; what it is or isn’t, etc.

But there is a setting on the record item (I call it a record because it’s a record item in a HTTP table set in the UI) to define the redirect as 301, 302, or framed. I’ve set it as 301 because this is a permanent change and the old domain will be removed when the paid time on it runs out.

Still, the redirect does not seem to be working yet. Maybe it takes time to propogate?

ruud · 2015-05-11 10:28:46

What was the old TTL? If this is implemented by setting a CNAME to a DNSmadeEasy server, which then does a HTTP 301, then the old DNS record has to expire from DNS caches.

Destry · 2015-05-11 13:21:00

Sorry Ruud, I had to step out a while.

ruud wrote #290641:

What was the old TTL? If this is implemented by setting a CNAME to a DNSmadeEasy server, which then does a HTTP 301, then the old DNS record has to expire from DNS caches.

I don’t know if that’s what the process is at all. I’m not setting any CNAME anywhere at the moment, I’m only creating the HTTP 301 at DNSME in the old.tld zone file.

Here is the instruction I got from DNSME:

Destry,

> A web user calls “old.tld” will be forwarded to “new.tld”.
>
> A web user calls “old.tld/articles” will be forwarded to
> “new.tld/articles”.

What you describe is how HTTP Redirection records function in our system by default.

If you create an HTTP Redirection record for old.tld which redirects users to http://new.tld/
then if a user requests http://old.tld/folder/doc.html they will be redirected to http://new.tld/folder/doc.html

We have a tutorial for HTTP Redirection records on our Help site here:
http://help.dnsmadeeasy.com/managed-dns/records/http-redirection-record/

But I’m starting to suspect they didn’t understand my situation, which I described to them much like I described at the head of this thread.

The TTL I have set on my current HTTP record is 1800, It was created a couple of hours ago, at least, and there’s still no redirection behavior happening when I go to old.tld.

Btw, I was using old.tld and new.tld for convenience of length, but the two domains are csforum.eu and csf.community, respectively.

Btw2, using vm_maintenance wouldn’t have any bearing on things would it? I doubt it would.

ruud · 2015-05-11 13:39:26

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘external aliases’, but the advice they gave makes sense.

The current TTL isn’t important. I was referring to the TTL before you made these changes, because those old DNS records tend to be cached by other nameservers around the world and have to expire first. Having said that, I don’t see any redirection happening either and it doesn’t seem to be a TTL issue.

rvm_maintenance shouldn’t have an effect on this.

The HTTP redirection they offer can be done via .htaccess as well.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://csf.community%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,NC]

Destry · 2015-05-11 15:36:03

It’s working now.

One detail they didn’t tell me I needed to do initially was remove the existing “A” record for old.tld, then create the HTTP redirect as described before.

Once I did that, it started working immediately. These are things I would have never known to do.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time, ruud. I appreciate it.

bici · 2015-05-11 18:38:40

Destry wrote #290653:

It’s working now.

One detail they didn’t tell me I needed to do initially was remove the existing “A” record for old.tld, then create the HTTP redirect as described before.

are you using Gandi

ruud · 2015-05-11 20:05:36

He’s using DNS Made Easy

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#1 2015-05-11 06:30:45