cname to cname possible?

SamirD · January 26, 2006

I have a fairly complicated dns setup using both network solutions and the dns host built into cpanel in my host.

What I am trying to do is setup a subdomain entry (newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com) to my smugmug domain name (huntsvillecarscene.smugmug.com). Is there any technical limit that anyone knows of that will keep this from working. I've been messing with this for two days now. :scratch

devbobo · January 26, 2006

SamirD wrote:

I have a fairly complicated dns setup using both network solutions and the dns host built into cpanel in my host.

What I am trying to do is setup a subdomain entry (newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com) to my smugmug domain name (huntsvillecarscene.smugmug.com). Is there any technical limit that anyone knows of that will keep this from working. I've been messing with this for two days now.

newpics is just a CNAME, like www.

so if you add a cname "newpics" and point it to your smugmug url you should be fine.

Andy · January 26, 2006

SamirD wrote:

I have a fairly complicated dns setup using both network solutions and the dns host built into cpanel in my host.

What I am trying to do is setup a subdomain entry (newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com) to my smugmug domain name (huntsvillecarscene.smugmug.com). Is there any technical limit that anyone knows of that will keep this from working. I've been messing with this for two days now.

can your domain host handle *.huntsvillecarscene and have that CNAME Aliased to www.smugmug.com ?

SamirD · January 26, 2006

devbobo wrote:

newpics is just a CNAME, like www.

so if you add a cname "newpics" and point it to your smugmug url you should be fine.

That's what I thought too.

A nslookup, ping, and traceroute says it's pointing, but if I try to go to it, it only goes to my main site. What do you think is happenning? I really can't figure it out.

devbobo · January 26, 2006

SamirD wrote:

That's what I thought too. A nslookup, ping, and traceroute says it's pointing, but if I try to go to it, it only goes to my main site. What do you think is happenning? I really can't figure it out.

can you PM me your dns configuration ?

SamirD · January 26, 2006

devbobo wrote:

can you PM me your dns configuration ?

The network solutions one doesn't give any more info other than that "newpics" is cname to other host "huntsvillecarscene.smugmug.com.".

The cpanel gives some more information:
newpics ttl 14400 in cname huntsvillecarscene.smugmug.com.

The way my dns works is that networksolutions is my dns host. But any name other than www and newpics (and a few others) will go to the dns on my host. So on the host I have some additional redirections setup.

Since anything not found on networksolutions goes to my host, I typically only set up a cname or redirection on my host. But since this wasn't working, I went ahead and set it up on network solutions as well. If this makes any sense.

Just to satisfy the question "why", I initially registered the domain name and dns services with network solutions before I had found a host. And since I've changed hosts as I've grown, I've simply kept the dns part of my site with network solutions vs transferring it each time.

Thank you for taking the time to help me on this puzzling problem. In theory, it should be working.

devbobo · January 26, 2006

it gets weirder...

looked up the dns on your local server...seems fine

so decided to do some ping tests...

ping www.huntsvillecarscene.com

Pinging www.huntsvillecarscene.com [72.29.120.50] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 72.29.120.50: bytes=32 time=244ms TTL=44
Reply from 72.29.120.50: bytes=32 time=241ms TTL=44
Reply from 72.29.120.50: bytes=32 time=250ms TTL=44
Reply from 72.29.120.50: bytes=32 time=262ms TTL=44

ping newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com

Pinging HUNTSVILLECARSCENE.SMUGMUG.com [63.81.134.23] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 63.81.134.23: bytes=32 time=218ms TTL=51
Reply from 63.81.134.23: bytes=32 time=212ms TTL=51
Reply from 63.81.134.23: bytes=32 time=214ms TTL=51
Reply from 63.81.134.23: bytes=32 time=230ms TTL=51

pings resolving correctly !!

SamirD · January 26, 2006

devbobo wrote:

it gets weirder...

looked up the dns on your local server...seems fine

so decided to do some ping tests...

ping www.huntsvillecarscene.com

Pinging www.huntsvillecarscene.com [72.29.120.50] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 72.29.120.50: bytes=32 time=244ms TTL=44
Reply from 72.29.120.50: bytes=32 time=241ms TTL=44
Reply from 72.29.120.50: bytes=32 time=250ms TTL=44
Reply from 72.29.120.50: bytes=32 time=262ms TTL=44

ping newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com

Pinging HUNTSVILLECARSCENE.SMUGMUG.com [63.81.134.23] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 63.81.134.23: bytes=32 time=218ms TTL=51
Reply from 63.81.134.23: bytes=32 time=212ms TTL=51
Reply from 63.81.134.23: bytes=32 time=214ms TTL=51
Reply from 63.81.134.23: bytes=32 time=230ms TTL=51

pings resolving correctly !!

I know! I know!

Is this not the most bizarre thing ever?

I'm starting to think that it is something on the dns configuration on the cpanel system. I need to ssh in and see if it resolves from the server...

...well, I just tried that and oh, it just gets better. From an ssh session, it pings fine! A ping to newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com resolves to huntsvillecarscene.smugmug.com. :cry

Boy, when I have an issue, I really have an issue. :uhoh

Any assistance/ideas/theories/long shots appreciated.

First one to solve it gets a cookie!

And will be known as a dns god in my book...

geoeremite · January 27, 2006

You do have a misconfiguration in your DNS settings... but that shouldn't be the problem (the cname is supposed to point to "www.smugmug.com." but yours is pointing at "HUNTSVILLECARSCENE.SMUGMUG.com." -- currently those are the same IP address, so it shouldn't be critical, but I thought I'd mention that it differs from the documentation).

Double check your smugmug control panel configuration (control panel->domain) and make sure the hostname is correct with *no* typos

. In the custom hostname field you should have "newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com".

If that's correct, then I think someone on the smugmug side has to take a another look because it's hera.smugmug.com that's returning the 302 redirect that sends you to [url]www.huntsvillecarscene.com:[/url]

> host 63.81.134.23
23.134.81.63.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer hera.smugmug.com.
> telnet newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com 80
Trying 63.81.134.23...
Connected to huntsvillecarscene.smugmug.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0
Host: newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 17:12:14 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Powered-By: smugmug/1.2.0
Location: http://www.huntsvillecarscene.com/
ETag: sm-d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e-sm
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

Connection closed by foreign host.

If that part makes your eyes glaze over, don't worry it just shows that it's smugmug doing the redirection.... not that I know *why* it's doing so

--Scott

SamirD · January 28, 2006

geoeremite wrote:

You do have a misconfiguration in your DNS settings... but that shouldn't be the problem (the cname is supposed to point to "www.smugmug.com." but yours is pointing at "HUNTSVILLECARSCENE.SMUGMUG.com." -- currently those are the same IP address, so it shouldn't be critical, but I thought I'd mention that it differs from the documentation).

Double check your smugmug control panel configuration (control panel->domain) and make sure the hostname is correct with *no* typos . In the custom hostname field you should have "newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com".

If that's correct, then I think someone on the smugmug side has to take a another look because it's hera.smugmug.com that's returning the 302 redirect that sends you to [url]www.huntsvillecarscene.com:[/url]

> host 63.81.134.23
23.134.81.63.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer hera.smugmug.com.
> telnet newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com 80
Trying 63.81.134.23...
Connected to huntsvillecarscene.smugmug.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0
Host: newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 17:12:14 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Powered-By: smugmug/1.2.0
Location: http://www.huntsvillecarscene.com/
ETag: sm-d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e-sm
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

Connection closed by foreign host.

If that part makes your eyes glaze over, don't worry it just shows that it's smugmug doing the redirection.... not that I know *why* it's doing so

--Scott

Thank you very much for the reply.

I found differing documentation on which domain name to point my cname to. In the "official" help, is says smugmug.com. On some of the forum threads, it's the custom huntsvillecarscene.smugmug.com url.

I found some smugmug "official" help pages to be outdated, so I used the results I found in the forum pages. That is one thing I can try--changing it to smugmug.com. Although when someone types in newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com it would go directly to smugmug's home page and not my home page on smugmug.

That's interesting that smugmug is doing the redirection. I thought it was something on my host's side. I'll try changing my co-branding web site and see if it will change the redirection. It will be interested to hear what's going on smugmug's side.

Andy · January 31, 2006

SamirD wrote:

Thank you very much for the reply.

I found differing documentation on which domain name to point my cname to. In the "official" help, is says smugmug.com. On some of the forum threads, it's the custom huntsvillecarscene.smugmug.com url.

I found some smugmug "official" help pages to be outdated, so I used the results I found in the forum pages. That is one thing I can try--changing it to smugmug.com. Although when someone types in newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com it would go directly to smugmug's home page and not my home page on smugmug.

That's interesting that smugmug is doing the redirection. I thought it was something on my host's side. I'll try changing my co-branding web site and see if it will change the redirection. It will be interested to hear what's going on smugmug's side.

Samir,

Here's the official help page:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/professional-accounts

It's a two step process:

1) set your domain host CNAME Alias to www.smugmug.com
2) put www.mydomain.com in your SmugMug control panel>domain field.

I'll help you here in this thread.

SamirD · January 31, 2006

Andy wrote:

Samir,

Here's the official help page:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/professional-accounts

It's a two step process:

1) set your domain host CNAME Alias to www.smugmug.com
2) put www.mydomain.com in your SmugMug control panel>domain field.

I'll help you here in this thread.

I just got it working a few minutes ago. I had www.huntsvillecarscene.com in my domain under my pro settings. That should have been newpics.huntsvillecarscene.com. Sorry for the trouble, and thank you for the help.

SamirD · January 31, 2006

So for anyone that's interested in cname to cname redirection, here's the steps:

Setup your cname entry in your dns configuration with your host to point to www.smugmug.com. Ie, yourSubdomain.yourDomain.com to www.smugmug.com.
Next, set your custom hostname under your smugmug settings to your cname, ie yourSubdomain.yourDomain.com. Note, www.yourSubdomain.yourDomain.com may or may not work--I never tried it since I don't need it.
That's it!

Now when someone tries to access yourSubdomain.yourDomain.com, they will be redirected to your smugmug page. This is a good way to use your existing domain name and web site and still have a custom domain name without smugmug in it. However, your smugmug cart will show the smugmug name and domain name and will also no longer follow any themes set up for your site. So the illusion ends there.

Andy · January 31, 2006

SamirD wrote:

So for anyone that's interested in cname to cname redirection, here's the steps:
Setup your cname entry in your dns configuration with your host to point to www.smugmug.com. Ie, yourSubdomain.yourDomain.com to www.smugmug.com.

Next, set your custom hostname under your smugmug settings to your cname, ie yourSubdomain.yourDomain.com. Note, www.yourSubdomain.yourDomain.com may or may not work--I never tried it since I don't need it.

That's it!

Now when someone tries to access yourSubdomain.yourDomain.com, they will be redirected to your smugmug page. This is a good way to use your existing domain name and web site and still have a custom domain name without smugmug in it. However, your smugmug cart will show the smugmug name and domain name and will also no longer follow any themes set up for your site. So the illusion ends there.

thanks Samir - glad it's all worked out!

SamirD · January 31, 2006

Andy wrote:

thanks Samir - glad it's all worked out!

Me too!

Smugmug is exactly what I've been needing for over a year now. I can't wait to have my site visitors check it out. They will be shocked that they are actually leaving Huntsville Car Scene.

cname to cname possible?

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