Secondary domain name servers

Customers of our dedicated server, virtual dedicated server or co-location services can use Mythic Beasts' nameservers to provide secondary DNS for any domains hosted on your server. Similarly, we will provide free secondary DNS for any domains registered through us, with no restrictions on where the master server is. In either case, contact support to enable secondary DNS for your account.

This page documents the interface to our web-based secondary DNS system. This replaces the email-based AutoDNS system. For more information on the old system please see the AutoDNS support page. If you're currently using AutoDNS, please contact support to arrange migration to the new system.

To use this our secondary DNS service, you should add ns1.mythic-beasts.com and ns2.mythic-beasts.com as nameservers for your domains, and make sure that your master nameserver permits zone transfers to their IP addresses.

Control panel interface

The secondary DNS service can be configured using the Customer Control Panel. The Secondary DNS configuration is in the "Domains" section. Here you can set the IP address of the master server, and add and remove domains to your account.

Automation interface

For users with a large number of domains, we also provide a simple HTTP-based API, allowing you to script addition and removal of domains. To use the API, you must set a password in the control panel interface that will be used to authenticate your requests.

Request to the API take the form of HTTP POST requests containing a number of HTTP parameters. These are documented below. HTTP requests should be made to https://secure.mythic-beasts.com/control/fcgi/customer/secondarydnsapi.

HTTP parameters

username (required) The username for your Secondary DNS service. This is provided in the Customer Control Panel.

password (required) The password set in the control panel.

command (required) An API command. This parameter can be repeated to allow multiple commands in a single request. Commands take the form of a verb which may be followed by a domain name, as appropriate. Details of the commands are given below.

Commands

command parameters in the HTTP request are processed in order, and the results of each command are returned in a text/plain HTTP response. The commands and their responses are as follows:

ADD This requests that a domain be added to the account. For example:


ADD mythic-beasts.com

If successful, the response will contain ADD followed by the domain name. Otherwise, the response will contain NADD followed by the domain name and a reason. For example:


NADD mythic-beasts.com: We already provide secondary DNS for mythic-beasts.com

DELETE This requests that a domain be removed from the account. For example:


DELETE mythic-beasts.com

The response will contain DELETE followed by the domain name in the event of success, and NDELETE followed by the domain name and a reason in the event of failure.

LIST This command takes no arguments, and requests a list of all domains on the account. The response will contain a line with DOMAIN followed by a domain name for each domain on the account. For example:


DOMAIN mythic-beasts.com
DOMAIN beasts.org