cname-recorddomain-name-system
I've got a domain hosted (DNS only) on Dreamhost. I've got www.mydomain.com CNAME'd to my web app on heroku, I would also like to CNAME just the domain (mydomain.com). Ofcourse, you can only CNAME subdomains.
What should I do to make mydomain.com point to my heroku app, or even redirect to www.mydomain.com?
Cheers!
I've set up a domain with godaddy using heroku so see if this helps.
First you set up 3 A records with the hostname @ to point to the heroku ips: 75.101.163.44, 75.101.145.87, and 174.129.212.2 (check their docs to make sure they are the same when you do this).
Then you add just one CNAME record if you want www and have it point to @.
If you use the total DNS control feature your screen will end up looking something like this:
You also need to use the heroku addon for DNS and configure it:
heroku addons:add custom_domains:basic
heroku domains:add yourdomainname.com
heroku domains:add www.yourdomainname.com
Doing the above should get you set up with their free basic DNS service.
No you don't need to have recursion on for authoritative DNS servers. Depending on who you ask it's even considered good practice that (if possible) your authoritative server not be recursive as it's a line of defence against some DoS attacks. (Cisco's document is here for example)
A sample from my domain is below (Server is running Bind 9 and is non-recursive).
; <<>> DiG 9.5.1-P3 <<>> mail.<snip> @<my authoritative master>
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 1216
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 4, ADDITIONAL: 4
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;mail.<snip>. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
mail.<snip>. 86400 IN CNAME ghs.google.com.
ghs.google.com. 158151 IN CNAME ghs.l.google.com.
ghs.l.google.com. 33 IN A 74.125.47.121
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
google.com. 153556 IN NS ns4.google.com.
google.com. 153556 IN NS ns2.google.com.
google.com. 153556 IN NS ns3.google.com.
google.com. 153556 IN NS ns1.google.com.
;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns1.google.com. 169823 IN A 216.239.32.10
ns2.google.com. 169823 IN A 216.239.34.10
ns3.google.com. 169823 IN A 216.239.36.10
ns4.google.com. 169823 IN A 216.239.38.10
It sounds more like a DNS misconfiguration at the Windows 2003 DNS than anything else.
Best Answer
Heroku's documentation on the matter references DNSimple's ALIAS records. If Dreamhost doesn't offer something similar, you'll need to run a small server handling the apex record, use a service like wwwizer.com, or switch DNS providers to one like DNSimple.