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Manage Apex Domains In OS X

OS X Server supports running a traditional bind implementation of DNS. You can define a record for most any name, including google.com, www.google.com, www.www.google.com, etc. You can use this to redirect subdomains. In this example, we’ll create an A Record to point www.google.com to 127.0.0.1 without breaking other google.com subdomains. To get started, let’s use the DNS service in the Server app to create test.www.google.com. The reason for this is that OS X will then create a zone file for www.google.com. If we created www.google.com instead, then OS X would automatically create google.com, which would break the other subdomains. To do so, open Server app and click on the DNS Service. Then click on the plus sign to create a new record.

Screen Shot 2014-09-23 at 10.55.58 AM

Now, if you restart dns and ping test.www.google.com you should see the referenced IP. To then change www.google.com, we’d edit the zone file stored at /Library/Server/named/db.www.krypted.com. This file will look like this when you first open it:

www.google.com. 10800 IN SOA www.google.com. admin.www.google.com. (
2014092301 ; serial
3600 ; refresh (1 hour)
900 ; retry (15 minutes)
1209600 ; expire (2 weeks)
86400 ; minimum (1 day)
)
10800 IN NS test.www.google.com.
test.www.google.com. 10800 IN A 127.0.0.1

We’ll add an a record for a.www.google.com:

a.www.google.com. 10801 IN A 127.0.0.1

Now, to change the apex record, you’d just replace the name you’ve been using with an @:

@ 10801 IN A 127.0.0.1

Good luck!