ISPconfig in a home network

[zenny]

I am new to ISPconfig and networking.

I installed a home network with an openvz machine. The HN (hardware node) of the machine serves as a firewall (shorewall) and one of the VE (vps) has ISPConfig installed and running. The ISPConfig web interface is accessible from the internet. Now the question is how to configure it such a way that the new tlds inside VE could be accessed from internet, too.

To make my problem clear, the external public IP is 81.xx.xx.xx with two nameservers which has been defined as ns1.tld.domain and ns2.tld.domain in the domain control panel of the domain registrar. The VE has 192.168.1.x. I could not access the internet with the https://tld.domain:81 no matter whatever I change in the server settings (I used the IP of the VE as well as the external IP of the router, does not make any difference).

On the other hand the ISPconfig status shows that postifix mailserver is stopped. Where shall I need to make the changes to make it run?

PS: I have installed v2.2.9 of ISPConfig and initially I installed with localhost.localdomain as a parameter which I want to change to my registered tld.domain. Thank you.

[till]

Example for creating and running a website domain.tld in ISPConfig:

1) Create a client.
2) Create a website in ISPConfig for www.domain.tld, select the internal IP of your server for this website.
3) Make sure you forwarded port 80 on your router to the internal server IP, that you selected for the website.
4) make sure that the DNS-Records for www.domain.tld are pointing to the external IP of your router.

[zenny]

I did it exactly with the internal IPs specified and also pointed the DNS in the domain control panel (external) to the nameservers specified. Still no luck.

[till]

What do you see exactly when you call the website domain in the browser?

[zenny]

The error message with domain.tld is "Firefox can't find the server at http://domain.tld"

However, I can access the server when I type the IP address instead of the domainname.

[till]

Ok, this is a dns error. Make sure that you created the domain in the authoritive nameserver for domain.tld and thet the IP points to your external server IP.

You can not access websites in ISPConfig by IP.

[zenny]

Thanks and sorry for my dumb questions. I could not follow what are authoritative nameservers (I got two from my ISP, aren't they?) and what do you mean by "you cannot specify websites in ISPconfig by IP?" I meant that I can access ISPConfig webinterface by IP, not domain.

[falko]

Originally Posted by zenny

I could not follow what are authoritative nameservers (I got two from my ISP, aren't they?)

Authoritative name servers are the name servers that are responsible for your domain. You can find out about them by running

dig ns yourdomain.com

on the shell.

Originally Posted by zenny

and what do you mean by "you cannot specify websites in ISPconfig by IP?"

You can access the web sites that you create in ISPConfig only by their domain names, not by IP address.
The ISPConfig web interface, however, can be accessed by IP address or domain.

[zenny]

Thank you till and falko.

The dig command gives the following output:

dig ns domain.com

; <<>> DiG 9.2.4 <<>> ns domain.com
;; global options: printcmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

Now, where did I go wrong?

Here is what I did. I managed child namservers in my domain control panel of the domain registrar and pointed to the same server. Whois gives the correct nameservers where I pointed to. I specified the same nameserves in the ISPConfig DNS settings. I pointed the DNS-records in ISPConfig to the external IP of my router.

Thanks for your guidance. Merry Xmas and Happy New year.

[till]

Plaese make sure that the DNS servers listed in /etc/resolv.conf are reachable.