After purchasing your domain, you can host websites, subdomains, and mail. To do all these things the name server must be setup correctly.
whois
whois
is a command that tells you when a domain name will expire, who owns it, and the current name
servers.
$ whois example.com
Name Server: A.IANA-SERVERS.NET
Name Server: B.IANA-SERVERS.NET
Look for the name servers section. You will probably have at least 2 name servers.
dig each name server
For each of the name servers, run dig and test that the correct IPs are being returned for your domain.
$ dig example.com @A.IANA-SERVERS.NET
; <<>> DiG 9.9.3-P2 <<>> example.com @A.IANA-SERVERS.NET
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 24279
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;example.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
example.com. 86400 IN A 93.184.216.119
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
example.com. 172800 IN NS b.iana-servers.net.
example.com. 172800 IN NS a.iana-servers.net.
;; Query time: 39 msec
;; SERVER: 199.43.132.53#53(199.43.132.53)
;; WHEN: Tue Dec 03 20:18:41 GMT 2013
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 104
Check that the status is NOERROR
.
Check that the ANSWER section resolves your domain to the expected IP. In this case, example.com resolves to 93.184.216.119
.
At the bottom of the output check that the SERVER is the IP of the nameserver.
If you do not have dig
installed, you can use nslookup
instead.
nslookup
> server A.IANA-SERVERS.NET
Default server: A.IANA-SERVERS.NET
Address: 199.43.132.53#53
> example.com
Server: A.IANA-SERVERS.NET
Address: 199.43.132.53#53
Name: example.com
Address: 93.184.216.119
> exit
dig to check your MX entries
The mail exchanger is another type of record you may to check. Add a MX
after the domain argument.
$ dig gmail.com MX @ns1.google.com
; <<>> DiG 9.9.3-P2 <<>> gmail.com MX @ns1.google.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 62144
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 5, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 5
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;gmail.com. IN MX
;; ANSWER SECTION:
gmail.com. 3600 IN MX 10 alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
gmail.com. 3600 IN MX 5 gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
gmail.com. 3600 IN MX 30 alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
gmail.com. 3600 IN MX 40 alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
gmail.com. 3600 IN MX 20 alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. 300 IN A 173.194.70.27
gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. 300 IN A 173.194.67.27
alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. 300 IN A 173.194.71.27
alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. 300 IN A 173.194.79.27
alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. 300 IN A 173.194.69.27
;; Query time: 57 msec
;; SERVER: 216.239.32.10#53(216.239.32.10)
;; WHEN: Tue Dec 03 20:22:52 GMT 2013
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 230