DNS Question

[goon12]

Hi,

I have had a static IP address and had my domain ( crankhouse.com ) pointing to that IP address. Now, just this past Monday, my ISP ( Charter ) revoked my static IP address and now I have a dynamic IP. So I signed up a domain with dyndns.org ( crankhouse.homelinux.org ), and it works fine.

Is there anyway for me to point crankhouse.com at crankhouse.homelinux.org? I have tried doing a CNAME and an A record. Neither worked, because the "domain manager" with my registrat spits out a vague error.

Thanks,
goon12

[bwkaz]

dyndns has a mode ("custom DNS" perhaps?) where they'll host your non-dyndns-owned name for you, providing all the same dynamic updates, etc. You just have to point your NS records to their name servers (aka "transfer your domain" to them).

(But I don't think it's free, so that may be an issue for you.)

Without that, though, yes, a CNAME should work fine, as long as you don't point it to another CNAME. (An A record can only point to an IP address, so it won't help with your dynamic IP -- every time your address changes, you'll have to go manually update that A record. Using a CNAME means it'll never have to change.) Make the CNAME point to "crankhouse.homelinux.org." (including the trailing dot). (If you turn on the "wildcard" option in dyndns, you can use names like "www.crankhouse.homelinux.org". But those names are all CNAMEs, so you can't point another CNAME to them. You have to point to your A, which is the shorter version from above.)

If your DNS service doesn't like this, then they're just stupid, as far as I can tell. :p