I now have a dedicated server from OVH (a kimsufi server) that I'm hopefully going to use for my hosting. It is a bare system with a fresh ubuntu 12.04 install.

So far I have installed ISPconfig this guide

http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-server-ubuntu-12.04-lts-apache2-bind-dovecot-ispconfig-3

Next step is getting a domain pointing at it.

OVH offer a secondary DNS service.

I'll add some more info later when I get chance, but I assume someone on here has setup a server from scratch to be full web facing and resolvable?

Unless you're a masochist, don't bother running your own DNS server (bind), keep the domain hosted at your registrar and point the A and MX records at your server's static IP.

Right.

What do I need where?

On my domain registrar I have my name servers as:
NS1 : dedicated server address
NS2 : secondary DNS address from OVH

What then needs to be in the DNS Zone editor of ISPconfig?

It currently looks like this, which is clearly wrong.

intoDNS is unsurprisingly complaining too.

Right, so just use the registrar nameservers and point the A and MX.

I'll try that and clean up my DNS Zone

Now that saved a lot of hassle. Thanks!

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

You're welcome too.

A day late, but +1.  Fuck BIND. 

Next question.

Do I need to care about MX server addresses?

I don't have any assigned with my registrars. I just have @ and www pointing at my IP with A records.

Email is being sent and received fine so I'm hoping I can just ignore them all.

Oh, apart from the domain I'm using GApps for email. I guess when I move that I need to point them MX servers to Google?

Mx is entirely for email, so yes you will need them to be able to recieve email to your domain(s)

But I haven't knowingly set them and I can send and receive email.

I'll have to delve deeper.

If your hosting has some kind of cPanel type thing, it's probably dealing with them automatically. By default they dont' show in the DNS Manager I don't think.

Plug your domain name into http://mxtoolbox.com/ and see what comes back

I've installed ISPConfig as my "cpanel" type thing. It was just a bare and very cheap dedicated server.

mxtoolbox is giving lookup failures on two domains but emails are coming and going fine. Confused.

There doesn't seem to be an authoritive answer to this that I can find (or my Google-fu isn't working), but this page here implies that if an A record points at IP address that is running an SMTP server, the sending server will talk with that IP address to attempt to deliver the mail.

Presumably, if MX records are present they supersede all A records.

Thanks for that.

I shall leave it for the time being and not worry about it unless emails stop arriving.

Am I right to assume the "@" record is email related?

@ in DNS records means root, i.e. no sub-domain. They can be used on all types of records (I believe), including A and CNAME although having a @ CNAME record prevents all other @ records working (again, I believe)

Since no-ip have gone down because of Microsoft being cunts I actually got my subdomains working dynamic properly now.

Ended up using the free nameservers at afraid.org and pointing things through them.

That's how I do mine as well.  And I use Tomato so the router actually notifies afraid.org when a change happens.  Very set it and forget it and I like things like that!

5 min cronjob on one a local server is what I've been using.