How to link a domain name to a server

Question

I'm quite new to setting up webservers without a control panel. I've looked around answered questions on the site, but with no luck. With that said I've experimented a little to resolve my problem.

Basically I'm running bind9 on ubuntu 12.04 and I'm trying to bind a domain name I got from namecheap to the server. rDNS has been set up as are the nameservers with namecheap. I can obviously connect to my server with the IP which is 199.168.141.44. The domain I'm trying to get to work is www.aria-roleplay.com with nameservers ns1.aria-roleplay.com and ns2.aria-roleplay.com.

My httpd.conf file looks like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin admin@localhost
  DocumentRoot "/var/www/"
  ServerName www.aria-roleplay.com
</VirtualHost>

/etc/bind/db.linux_rocks

;
;BIND data file for local loopback interface
;
$TTL 604800
@   IN  SOA V-7848.linux.rocks. root.localhost. (
            2       ; Serial
            604800      ; Refresh
            86400       ; Retry
            2419200     : Expire
            604800 )    ; Negative Cache TTL
;
@   IN  NS  V-7848.linux.rocks.
@   IN  A   127.0.0.1
@   IN  AAAA    ::1

; Below are A Record Addresses

www.aria-roleplay.com   IN  A   199.168.141.44

dig aria-roleplay.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> aria-roleplay.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 34790
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;aria-roleplay.com.             IN      A

;; Query time: 4348 msec
;; SERVER: 199.168.141.44#53(199.168.141.44)
;; WHEN: Tue Aug  6 14:26:50 2013
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 35

How am I going to get this to work?

Answer 1

If all you're trying to do is point a domain name to your server the easier way to do it is to just use your registrar's DNS servers (I know namecheap has some) and set up the A records to point to your server's IP address. This is pretty much the same as doing it your way however you're taking out the pain of running your own DNS server.

You can still host multiple sites on your machine, just create separate vhosts for each site and create the relevant A records for each domain in your namecheap account.