No, you don't need a second domain.
You'll need to register your apex domain with a registrar and then check the option to use custom name servers. The only subdomains you'll need to configure are the glue records for your ns1 and ns2 name servers.
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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Assuming you've website.tld you just have to create two "child name servers"* eg. ns1.website.tld + ns2.website.tld and set their respective "glue records" (IP addresses). Your register needs to be able to create and publish those to the zone above for it to work. Not sure if that's the case with yours but it seems to be possible.
* The term "child name servers" is used by some providers to define those kinds of records and it may change from provider to provider.
I don’t understand how this can work because ns1.website.tld would be served by my dns server which is not yet known by others.
That's because they aren't served by your DNS server. Remember the "publish those to the zone above for it to work"? What happens is that your domain registrar has to publish your glue record to the TLD zone.
If you run dig +trace +additional google.com SOA you'll see:
- Ding asking a root dns server (xyz.gtld-servers.net) who's the name server for google.com
- Root server will provide you with NS record naming ns4.google.com.
- ... and also return A record for that name, 216.239.38.10. That’s the “additional” response that serves the glue record.
Then dig will proceed to call 216.239.38.10 and ask what's the record for google.com. That's how DNS and glue records work and also why it isn't a circular dependency like you were thinking it was.
Thanks for a all the details. Makes perfect sense. I got it to work!
Isn't that what I said? (genuinely asking). That's exactly how mine are all setup.
~~OP asked "Do I need a second domain" you answered "AFAIK, yes." even though you proceeded to contradict yourself :) Maybe you can remove the "AFAIK, yes." from the comment?~~
I actually updated the answer to be more descriptive informative meanwhile.
My bad. Didn't see "second" domain.
NP. Updated accordingly.
The thing you want is "glue records" the upper level server would serve ns1.example.com (this is an approved domain for example use, better to use example.com than making your own example up) as the authoritative name server. Then provide the glue record which says "ns1.example.com is at IP address X".
It should ask for IP addresses as well as hostname. Otherwise they only assumed people will "host" their domain in another hosted, as opposed to self-hosting.
In that case (and in any other case) change your registrar to someone else who supports glue records.
What do I take if I need more example domains on the second level? Do I use otherexample.com?
RFC 2606 is your friend ;-)
Just read it. Awesome. Thanks a lot.
I use porkbun.com for my domains, which is excellent, and also has glue record support.
https://kb.porkbun.com/article/112-how-to-host-your-own-nameservers-with-glue-records
I just switched to porkbun. Saves me about 20EUR per year. Thanks for the tip.
I missed the keyword "glue records". Ultimately I managed to get my dns server to work but decided against using it for now as the acme plugin is not able to do what I want. https://github.com/mariuskimmina/coredns-tlsplus/issues/2
Yeah porkbun is good.
To see how the glue records work, you can run dig +trace example.com
This answer goes into detail how it works behind the scenes.
https://superuser.com/questions/715632/how-does-dig-trace-actually-work
I don't use godaddy, so I'm only guessing here. Have you tried to enter the name (even though there is no way it would find them) and then see if it figures out it can't look them up and maybe then it'll prompt for an IP instead?
Which provider do you use? Can you enter an ip there?