Setting up DNS

I have read some DNS guides and tried it. Rather complicated and hard to manage. I would leave it to using the domain providers or your hosting provider’s DNS system. At rackspacecloud; and i presume most DNS settings have similar setting options, heres how its set:
  • you need 1x A record [which is IP],
  • 1x CName record [which is www.mydomain.com],
  • 1x MX record [which is mydomain.com; this allows asd@mydomain.com], and thats it.
if you need more sub domains you can add more CNames e.g. abc.mydomain.com
  • A record
    • Name = mydomain.com;
    • Content = 123.45.67.89; [content is your ip address]
    • TTL = 300;
  • CName record
    • Name = www.mydomain.com;
    • Content = mydomain.com;
    • TTL = 300;
  • MX record: Name = mydomain.com;
    • Content = mydomain.com;
    • TTL 300;
    • Priority = 10 [if you use google apps, they will give you a huge list of 6 mx records, I know. its a pain. Enter them all by changing the Content, such as Content = aspx.googlemail.com]
Take a note of TTL which is time to live in seconds. 300 seconds would be 5 minutes. If DNS is changed it will take 5 minutes to propogate throughout the world. Normally people put 84600 which is 24 hours.

Secure Server Setup Ubuntu 9.10 9.04

> ssh root@123.45.67.89
[say yes if fingerprint RSA Key is needed,enter your password;
> passwd [this allows you to set your root new password]
> apt-get update
> apt-get upgrade [this will run loads of install]
> reboot [wait for reboot and login using ssh... again]
> nano /etc/cron.daily/ntpdate [updating time]
> sudo chmod 755 /etc/cron.daily/ntpdate [there are other methods but this method adjusts and prevents time drift]
> locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 [setting local of system]
> apt-get install build-essential

Notes:

  1. if you get errors while ssh. on YOUR LOCAL MACHINE goto hosts file and delete the hostsrecord; look and delete the line with the same ip and delete it > nano ~/.ssh/known_hosts