I *think* this is a DNS forwarding question

#1

Hi,I hope someone can help out a noob today.

I’m using dlinkddns.com to point a domain name to a server I have at home. I’d like to replace that function with something set up on Dreamhost.

I’ve got the domain name already and I want to use a subdomain to map to the machine I have at home

foo.com (fully hosted at DH)

bar.foo.com (my server at home)

From what I can see in teh Domain managenet this is possible, except that the two optins that match the closest either have an undesired side-effect or are not allowed by policy.

I’ve marked in red the parts that seem to block me
The first one says:
Redirect

(Redirect this domain to another site, [color=#FF0000]changing the browser’s address in the process[/color].)
Domain to redirect: (user input here)
sub-domains are okay!
Redirect to URL: (user input here)

I want the URL to remain unchanged as bar.foo.com/whatever.html (as it does now using dlinkddns.com)

The second one says
DNS Only

(Use DreamHost’s DNS servers, but host the site elsewhere.)

Note that this will only work if DreamHost’s DNS servers are actually in use for the domain. If your domain is registered outside DreamHost, you will need to make sure that the nameservers are set to:

ns1.dreamhost.com
ns2.dreamhost.com
ns3.dreamhost.com

Domain to host DNS for:
[color=#FF0000]No sub-domains.[/color]

And because of how my ISP works, although I do have an IP that while dynamic has not actually changed in two years, my server IS a sub-domain of my ISPs domain. pool.blahblahblah.verizon.net

I’m hoping that I’m just looking in the wrong place on the control panel and that elsewhere is what I’m looking for, that I just don’t know the right noun for which to search!

Help is appreciated!

#2

I assume you created the subdomain in DH and the machine at your home has a dedicated IP address. To tell DH where to find your machine, you will need to create a A record.
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/A_record

#3

In addition to that wiki entry you might want to read my answer in this thread: http://discussion.dreamhost.com/thread-134039.html

#4

Thanks for the info! I’ll be trying that out very soon and will let y’all know the results.

#5

Yup, it’s working. Thanks for the help guys!

I do have a phase 2 I’m working on. I’m writing a ksh script to udpate the A record if my IP happens to change. Yeah, I know there is already a Python script someone already wrote, but I’m no good at Python .

The example script that helped me
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/User:Datagrok/ddns