So, I've been looking to setup a dev environment for MOC over on my VPS at work (for those who don't know, I work for a managed hosting company in Lansing called Liquid Web). I figured it would be easy enough - I would just delegate the dev.miopencarry.org and dev.michiganopencarry.org subzones over to my name servers.
Well, it's not possible to actually add NS records to a zone within cPanel itself - it needs to be added via WHM. So I pinged Bluehost support to see if they had anything on their end to enable me to do it myself.
Hello!
I'm looking to delegate dev.miopencarry.org and dev.michiganopencarry.org to a different set of nameservers.
I went to add the appropriate NS records, however it looks like that record type is not available in your zone editor. Is this something that could be enabled?
Thanks!
-Jason
Well, damn near two days later, I finally got a response.
Hello,
No it can not be done without effecting the actual site itself. The subdomains name servers are directly tied to the domain it belongs to name servers.
How did we do? Please help us improve the support that we offer you
by filling out this online survey:
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1248462/bluehost
Thank you,
Richard
Web Advisor
BlueHost.com
888.401.4678
.... two days for that? So of course I respond with the exact set of records that needs to be set:
Richard,
It can be done without affecting the main domain. It's just an issue of adding two NS records in the zone file.
dev.miopencarry.org and dev.michiganopencarry.org aren't actually doing anything right now other than using the same docroot for the main site.
All I would need are the following NS records to be added to the respective zone files:
dev.miopencarry.org 3600 IN NS ns1.hookerswithhandguns.com.
dev.miopencarry.org 3600 IN NS ns2.hookerswithhandguns.com.
dev.michiganopencarry.org 3600 IN NS ns1.hookerswithhandguns.com.
dev.michiganopencarry.org 3600 IN NS ns2.hookerswithhandguns.com.
-Jason
I thought it was straight forward. Hell, I laid out exactly what they would need to enter. Apparently, they still don't understand - even after sitting on the damn response for 28 hours.
Thank you for contacting Bluehost support,
I understand that you want to change your nameservers.
Here is our helpdesk article with step by step instructions on how to change them.
https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/222
However you would change the nameservers for the main domain not the subdomains.
Thank you,
Hillary
My response, because English is hard:
No, I do not want to change the nameservers.
I want to add a set of NS records so that the dev.miopencarry.org and dev.michiganopencarry.org zones are delegated elsewhere.
-Jason
It then takes them a few hours short of two days to come up with this little gem:
you cannot change the name servers of a subdomain how ever you can still point them to a diffrent server using the Arecord or the Cname
https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/559
https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/508#a
How did we do? Please help us improve the support that we offer you
by filling out this online survey:
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1248462/bluehost
Thank you,
Justin
Level I Tech Support Engineer
At this point, I figured I would send my initial public shaming via twitter:
https://twitter.com/jgillmanjr/status/451787208056655872With an all time record, they got back with me under three hours later:
Hello Jason,
We have looked into this for you at the request of our social media team. This can be done. Is what you need to do is contact your registrar (godaddy in this case) and have them set up the customer name servers. Then you need to point the A record of the subdomain to the IP of those custom NS. You will need two subdomains (dev1.michiganopencarry.org and dev2.michiganopencarry.org) that way you can point both A records to the two name server IP addresses.
How did we do? Please help us improve the support that we offer you
by filling out this online survey:
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1248462/bluehost
Thank you,
Ryan
Web Advisor
Wait, what? Still on the A records kick? I didn't realize their favorite color was also tomato.
I also figured this was a good time to let them know I work for the competition, and wrote our KB article on doing subzone delegation:
Ryan,
The zone delegation won't require the addition of any A records.
Here is a paste of a dig trace for the NS records for rrfaae.com and test.rrfaae.com (two of my own domains):
==== rrfaae.com ====
jgillman@rrfaae:~ $dig ns +trace rrfaae.com
; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-rpz2+rl005.12-P1 <<>> ns +trace rrfaae.com
;; global options: +cmd
. 518400 IN NS D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS J.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
;; Received 512 bytes from 10.30.7.254#53(10.30.7.254) in 155 ms
com. 172800 IN NS b.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS l.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS d.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS c.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS a.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS e.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS m.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS i.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS j.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS k.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS g.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS f.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS h.gtld-servers.net.
;; Received 500 bytes from 192.58.128.30#53(192.58.128.30) in 271 ms
rrfaae.com. 172800 IN NS ns1.hookerswithhandguns.com.
rrfaae.com. 172800 IN NS ns2.hookerswithhandguns.com.
;; Received 116 bytes from 192.26.92.30#53(192.26.92.30) in 33 ms
rrfaae.com. 86400 IN NS ns2.hookerswithhandguns.com.
rrfaae.com. 86400 IN NS ns1.hookerswithhandguns.com.
;; Received 116 bytes from 67.227.241.38#53(67.227.241.38) in 0 ms
==== test.rrfaae.com ====
jgillman@rrfaae:~ $dig ns +trace test.rrfaae.com
; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-rpz2+rl005.12-P1 <<>> ns +trace test.rrfaae.com
;; global options: +cmd
. 518400 IN NS I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS J.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
. 518400 IN NS H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
;; Received 512 bytes from 10.30.7.254#53(10.30.7.254) in 25 ms
com. 172800 IN NS g.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS i.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS b.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS f.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS m.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS l.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS h.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS k.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS d.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS j.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS e.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS c.gtld-servers.net.
com. 172800 IN NS a.gtld-servers.net.
;; Received 493 bytes from 192.5.5.241#53(192.5.5.241) in 30 ms
rrfaae.com. 172800 IN NS ns1.hookerswithhandguns.com.
rrfaae.com. 172800 IN NS ns2.hookerswithhandguns.com.
;; Received 121 bytes from 192.35.51.30#53(192.35.51.30) in 59 ms
test.rrfaae.com. 14400 IN NS ns.sourcedns.com.
test.rrfaae.com. 14400 IN NS ns1.sourcedns.com.
;; Received 78 bytes from 67.227.241.38#53(67.227.241.38) in 10 ms
test.rrfaae.com. 72000 IN NS ns1.sourcedns.com. <--- different than the authoritative nameservers for rrfaae.com
test.rrfaae.com. 72000 IN NS ns.sourcedns.com.
;; Received 110 bytes from 69.16.223.254#53(69.16.223.254) in 1 ms
Here is the relavent copy/pasta from the rrfaae.com zone file that makes this magic happen:
root@host [~]# cat /var/named/rrfaae.com.db | grep test
; cPanel first:11.32.5.13 (update_time):1393330845 Cpanel::ZoneFile::VERSION:1.3 hostname:host.hookerswithhandguns.com latest:11.42.0.12
test 14400 IN NS ns.sourcedns.com. <--- note these are the only records in the rrfaae.com zone - no A records
test 14400 IN NS ns1.sourcedns.com.
As mentioned earlier, here are the sets of NS records that need to bet set in the appropriate zone files in WHM, or wherever you guys are handling your DNS:
dev.miopencarry.org 3600 IN NS ns1.hookerswithhandguns.com.
dev.miopencarry.org 3600 IN NS ns2.hookerswithhandguns.com.
dev.michiganopencarry.org 3600 IN NS ns1.hookerswithhandguns.com.
dev.michiganopencarry.org 3600 IN NS ns2.hookerswithhandguns.com.
Full disclosure: I work at Liquid Web, and I've even written the KB article on Zone delegation (http://kb.liquidweb.com/automating-dns-with-zone-delegation-and-the-storm-api/)
-Jason
I would have thought at this point they would get the idea, or at least read my damn KB article to see what the hell I'm talking about. Apparently not though (and another over 24 hour turn around time):
The sub domains can be pointed using an A record or a Cname
https://my.bluehost.com/hosting/help/559
dev.miopencarry.org can only be pointed using an A record or a Cname
miopencarry.org can be pointed using an A record or a Cname or nameservers
How did we do? Please help us improve the support that we offer you
by filling out this online survey:
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1248462/bluehost
Thank you,
Justin
Level I Tech Support Engineer
BlueHost.com
888.401.4678
At this point the gloves are getting ready to come off. Still awaiting a response, but this is what I left them:
It seems pretty clear at this point that although I have essentially told you how to implement what I am asking, you still claim that it can't be done.
Could you please just escalate this to someone who understands what zone delegation is?
Thanks.
-Jason
I'll be interested to see what they come back with. If it's something other than "ok done" or at least some kind if intelligent response that I would expect from a competent sysadmin, I'm thinking my public shaming is going to move beyond this post to facebook or web hosting talk.
Stay tuned to see this trainwreck as it develops!