Sorry if this is the wrong section or if this has been answered before (although in my searching over the last week I have not found an actual answer). I wish to set up a server (just for a website) but not use a control panel. I wish to learn how it is done. I rented a VPS and all was fine in my terminal interactions with it (except MySQL being a pain and not allowing me to login to it, but I thought to sort that later) until DNS! I had already bought a domain name (lets call it abc.tld for the purpose of this thread) and the firm that I bought through (who I also had the VPS from) changed the nameservers to ns1.abc.tld and ns2.abc.tld. I installed Bind9 and I set it up as best I could but I only had a single IP address. It worked to a point doing dig on it but it never would give back any A records. Everything else was fine, could load up a site, firewall all done, ssh key login etc but the set up of the dns I just can't get as all I read seems to be for a private network or requires multiple servers and I was trying to keep my costs down! Can anyone tell me please if I need multiple servers and would anyone have a correct link to information on how to do it all? PS: I did end up killing the VPS (can't gain access to it and neither can the Linux support team of the hosting company!!) Many thanks for any help you give
To expand; the only way I can currently see to do it is to rent 3 VPS and install ISPConfig on each and then get it to create the correct files required. After which I would need to rebuild the 3 VPS to a default state (only having the OS on them and so no control panel, just terminal access) and then create and configure the files to match what ISPConfig did! Which seems a tad silly but I see no other way!! So please, if you can, point me in the correct direction. Thank you in advance.
And why would you want to do that at all? To me that is not a correct direction either. If you asked me, I would rather use software like ISPConfig to manage my servers rather than doing it on my own, as that is very much crazy to me, especially for those, who can't even do it on their own at the first place.
Do those two name servers exist at the VPS provider? Then you should use them and configure you domain settings there. If you want to run your own name servers on the public Internet, you do need two name servers. It may be a requirement at the domain registrar, and they check occasionally domain has two working name servers. Some use only one name server and when registering the domain give the same IP for both name servers, this seems to work sometimes. When wanting to run your own web server, it is not a must to run also own name servers. You can leave the name server business to the hosting provider, and so you only need one host (which runs the web server).
Thank you @Taleman for your reply. It is kind of you. Even though some seem to consider me "crazy" I am only doing that which I consider correct in order to learn. I am a student and while doing this is not part of my curriculum, I do wish to know how to do it without a control panel. So this is in my spare time but that is rather limited from now! I have 2 exams in the next 2 weeks and then sec + a month after! All good fun but I will have to put this (not required learning experience project of mine) on hold for a short amount of time. Yes, the provider chnged them as with that hosting company I had no access to do so myself. Thank you for answering my question. It is very informative and good of you. I know but I wish to do so (even if for only a week or month) so that I know that I have learn't the underlying script required to do so. It is the same as my learning PHP. I could have just learn't frameworks based on PHP but I wanted to have knowledge of the root/base code! Again many thanks for your reply, it is very helpful to me. Be well Taleman
If you want to set up name servers using bind (and avoid using a control panel), there is authoritative book: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/dns-and-bind/0596100574/
your best option is probably still to use something like ispconfig to manage your configuration.. it's just so much easier.. and you'll know that the configuration works. if you want to learn bind/apache/nginx setup and configuration, you can then use another vps (hosted online, or run a virtual machine on your own pc (free)) and use that to practice with.. a local virtual machine is a good option, you'll always have access to it, even if you mess up the network / dns config. or lose internet. you can use local hosts files on your pc and the vm for naming, so you can query a vm installed bind server, or access a vm configured website. between online documentation, books, and being able to look at working configs (ispconfig). it should be much easier for you to learn how to manually set up and configure a working server (vm)
