Site can't be reached; DNS error

March 21, 2016 21.1k views
Deployment DNS Getting Started Ubuntu
shawnbtaylor23
By:
shawnbtaylor23

I purchased a domain through GoDaddy and was going through the steps to host my site through Digital Ocean but am running into DNS issues after following the steps to host.

I followed this tutorial: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-host-name-with-digitalocean

I updated the nameservers on GoDaddy over a month ago to point to ns1/2/3.digitalocean.com and created a new domain on Digital Ocean. But when I go to my domain, I just see an error saying "This site can't be reached. <mydomain>'s server DNS address could not be found" (ERRNAMENOT_RESOLVED).

I've hosted another domain through DO and had no issues at all. Was curious if anyone might now something I'm overlooking here. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

1 comment
  • ryanpq MOD March 21, 2016

    It does sound like there is an issue with your domain's configuration. If you can share the domain name you're having trouble with we can most likely find the issue pretty quickly.

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6 Answers
Dzire2Dzine August 22, 2016

If you are still facing this kind of error then try this:

  1. Go to DigitalOcean Dashboard > Networking > Domains https://cloud.digitalocean.com/networking/domains
  2. Select any domain
  3. define A record with wildcard DNS record. Mention "*" (asterisk) as hostname and your droplet IP address.
  4. And for the safe side you can also add one more A record with "www" and your droplet IP address.
Enter Name Enter IP Address
* xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
www xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Hope this helps. :)

Reply
mragusa March 29, 2016

Hello,

Do you see your domain able to resolve all the way down when you run:

dig <host> +trace

What does your zone file look like?

Please let us know if there is anything else we can help you with.

Best,
Mike
DigitalOcean Support
Check out our community for great tutorials, articles and FAQs!
https://digitalocean.com/community

Reply
  • shawnbtaylor23 March 30, 2016

    Hey Mike! Thanks for the response, it looks like it was able to resolve all the way down and everything looks fine with dig. My zone file looks like:

    sfwithlove.co. IN SOA ns1.digitalocean.com. hostmaster.sfwithlove.co. 1459318865 10800 3600 604800 1800
    sfwithlove.co. 1800 IN NS ns1.digitalocean.com.
    sfwithlove.co. 1800 IN NS ns2.digitalocean.com.
    sfwithlove.co. 1800 IN NS ns3.digitalocean.com.
    sfwithlove.co. 1800 IN A 159.203.230.117
    www.sfwithlove.co. 1800 IN CNAME sfwithlove.co.

    I don't have very much experience with hosting so I'm likely making a dumb mistake somewhere in here. I ended up following a Digital Ocean community tutorial article that worked with another domain I host through D.O. but for some reason this one doesn't seem to be responding as well! Any help would be greatly appreciated!

lekhrajprasad77 March 29, 2016

Short and Simple Video of DNS address problem with alternate solutions, do watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOfKSLKecJg

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mragusa March 30, 2016

Hello,

What sort of errors are you running into? Looking at your zone file, everything looks correct but I am seeing SERVFAIL errors when I query your domain against google:

% dig sfwithlove.co

; <<>> DiG 9.10.1-P1 <<>> sfwithlove.co
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 14564
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

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

;; Query time: 62 msec
;; SERVER: 2001:4860:4860::8844#53(2001:4860:4860::8844)
;; WHEN: Wed Mar 30 12:19:17 UTC 2016
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 42

% dig www.sfwithlove.co

; <<>> DiG 9.10.1-P1 <<>> www.sfwithlove.co
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 10977
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.sfwithlove.co. IN A

;; Query time: 120 msec
;; SERVER: 2001:4860:4860::8844#53(2001:4860:4860::8844)
;; WHEN: Wed Mar 30 12:20:50 UTC 2016
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 46

But the DigitalOcean name servers are able to properly resolve your domain:

% dig www.sfwithlove.co @ns1.digitalocean.com +short
sfwithlove.co.
159.203.230.117
% dig www.sfwithlove.co @ns2.digitalocean.com +short
sfwithlove.co.
159.203.230.117
% dig www.sfwithlove.co @ns3.digitalocean.com +short
sfwithlove.co.
159.203.230.117

Please let us know if there is anything else we can help you with.

Best,
Mike
DigitalOcean Support
Check out our community for great tutorials, articles and FAQs!
https://digitalocean.com/community

Reply
infotechrakshak April 20, 2016

i am facing same problem.I my GoDaddy's DNS file zone have previous two nameservers.
ns71.domaincontrol.com (Informational) and
ns72.domaincontrol.com (Informational)

should i delete it?

Reply
blakeingram405 July 9, 2016

were you ever able to solve this?

I am having this exact problem right now

My dns records were originally going through cloudflare but I am trying to switch them to digitaloceans

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