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Are my DNS settings working with DigitalOcean or are still using the old provider settings, how can I tell?

Posted August 26, 2017 2.2k views
WordPressDNSUbuntu 16.04

I’m recently moved from another host provider to DigitalOcean. In the previous host company I had configure a subdomain pointing to an application hosted on DigitalOcean, and in the previous provider I had configured Google Apps for email on my main website.

Now I’ve moved my main website to DigitalOcean to the best of my knowledge I configured the DNS settings correctly in the DigitalOcean DNS control panel for the main website, and I created a submain and added the Google Apps settings as well.

Of course, I’ve also change the nameservers on my registrar to make the switch. Now everything seems to be working OK, including website, subdomain, and Google Apps.

My question is that for a few more weeks I still have the old hosting service, where I didn’t change any of the settings, so I’m still wondering if after switching the nameservers to point the main website to the droplet on DigitalOcean, all my services (website, subdomain, and Google Apps) settings are being pull from the DigitalOcean DNS control panel?

I wouldn’t want to delete the old hosting provider account to find out that my subdomain and Google Apps stop working because I didn’t configure DigitalOcean DNS settings correctly and the settings were getting pull from the old provider.

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3 answers
runeo August 26, 2017

If you use a Mac or a Linux machine, you could open a terminal app and use the dig command.

dig google.com

Use your own domain name of course :-) This will show you this output:

dig google.com

; <<>> DiG 9.11.1-P2-RedHat-9.11.1-2.P2.fc26 <<>> google.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 51836
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.com.            IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.com.     299 IN  A   216.58.209.142

;; Query time: 40 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.1#53(192.168.1.1)
;; WHEN: Sat Aug 26 22:28:43 CEST 2017
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 55

The answer section shows you the domains A record and the IP it resolves to.

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mhweb August 27, 2017

Using the command returns the IP address of the corresponding server, but it doesn’t say if it’s getting routed through the DNS manager in my old hosting provider or DigitalOcean.

I know the main website is working as expected through DigitalOcean, I was just wondering if after changing the nameservers in the registrar subdomains and other services, such as mail, under the example.com domain will get routed through DigitalOcean.

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  • runeo August 27, 2017

    Does your old DNS record point to your new Digital Ocean IP?

    From the man page for the dig command

    DESCRIPTION
    dig (domain information groper) is a flexible tool for interrogating DNS name servers. It performs DNS lookups and displays the answers that are returned
    from the name server(s) that were queried. Most DNS administrators use dig to troubleshoot DNS problems because of its flexibility, ease of use and clarity
    of output. Other lookup tools tend to have less functionality than dig.

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mhweb August 27, 2017
  1. Example.com has a subdomain forums.example.com which has also been in DigitalOcean since the beginning, which means that in the cpanel of the old hosting provider has a subdomain that points to the DigitalOcean droplet.
  2. I haven’t touch any of the DNS settings in the old hosting provider, so the old hosting has forums.example.com configuration.
  3. After moving the main site (example.com) to its new home, DigitalOcean, I updated the registrar server names to point to the new server. This one I know is working because pinging the domain main reveals the new IP address of DigitalOcean.
  4. Then in the DigitalOcean DNS manager for the example.com server I added an “A” record pointing to the forums.example.com IP address, which as I recall from an article from DigitalOcean that all it was needed.

However, because forums.example.com always had the same DigitalOcean IP address, I can’t figure out if it’s being route through DigitalOcean DNS manager or the old hosting provider.

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