I’m having an issue changing the NS for various domains in their respective registrars because of what looks like a glue issue with Google Domains, but it doesn’t seem like it should be the case. Pseudo-domains follow.
mydomain.com is registered with Google Domains. It is configured to use the Cloudflare NS (custom nameservers). Everything works fine with this basic setup (eg: www.mydomain.com, MX records, SOA, etc).
I created A records for ns1.mydomain.com and ns2.mydomain.com - these are NOT USED as the NS for mydomain.com. I have a VPS with WHM/cPanel, and it is running a DNS server. ns1/ns2.mydomain.com A records are pointing to this VPS.
I have added an account to the VPS, otherdomain.com
If you do dig otherdomain.com @ns1.mydomain.com it works fine. You get the proper A record pointing to the proper IP address.
When I go to Namecheap and try to change the NS for otherdomain.com to ns1.mydomain.com I get a nondescript error message. I submitted a ticket and Namecheap is saying that effectively I need to add glue records for ns1/ns2.mydomain.com at Google Domains.
A) this is impossible. When using a custom NS in Google domains, you cannot add “registered hosts”/glue records. You can only add records like this when using Google’s NS, in which case I can’t use any of the Cloudflare stuff. FWIW it appears that DirectNIC is also giving a similar failure when trying to change the NS for domains there, too.
B) my understanding is that you only need a glue record if you are trying to do mydomain.com IN NS ns1.mydomain.com - I am not doing that. In my case, mydomain.com IN NS cloudflare.com and I am trying to do otherdomain.com IN NS ns1.mydomain.com
I double-checked that the ns1/ns2 records in Cloudflare are NOT proxied (DNS only).
Any other suggestions? I’d like to use Cloudflare for the DNS here, but if I can’t make this work, I might have to stick with the Google built-in DNS to be able to register the hosts. This post seems to be relevant: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/question-about-glue-records-custom-nameserves/171040 but it is the one that suggests:
You only need glue records when you are resolving a domain who’s nameservers exist as records under that same domain. Outside of this glue records are not needed or used.
