[SOLVED] Google Apps cannot verify. What am I doing wrong?

Google's TXT record (or CNAME if using that) needs to be added to your zone itself (attached to the domain itself), and not as a child record. So you don't want to set the record name to the validation key.

You can either use @ for the record name, or just leave it blank, to add the record to your zone. You should be able to do a TXT lookup (say, with "dig") on your "domain.com" directly to check, and if you check the generated zone from the DNS Manager you should see the record at zone level ("@").

Note that as long as you set up the MX records for email verification, in my experience Google Apps will notice and validate your ownership of the domain automatically without a separate domain validation step. At least that's how I normally set up my GA domains.

– David

I see what you are saying.

Ok, so I changed the TXT record to reflect this:

Name: @

Value: google-site-verification=the letters/numbers it gave me

TTL: Default

As far as your domains are concerned, I placed all 5 Google MX records that was indicated in the documentation and to delete the Mail MX record that was originally there. Besides the 5 Google MX records, should I add another one based on what you said?

[SOLVED] Ok, so I changed my TXT record to the above, went to the store, came back and clicked on Verify from the Google Apps screen…..and it worked.

Thanks for the advice.

@lighthammer:

[SOLVED] Ok, so I changed my TXT record to the above, went to the store, came back and clicked on Verify from the Google Apps screen…..and it worked.

Thanks for the advice.

Probably an update case then. Linode DNS manager only updates the DNS server every 15 minutes, then you have to be sure google is grabbing the most recent as well.

I just did the file method, which has you put a file into your web server root with those numbers in it.

So on a follow up, if I have a second domain that will share the same VPS, do I need to add a new Domain Zone or simply add the domain to my first domain zone?

If I just have to add the domain to the first domain zone, which record do I create?

@lighthammer:

So on a follow up, if I have a second domain that will share the same VPS, do I need to add a new Domain Zone or simply add the domain to my first domain zone?

If I just have to add the domain to the first domain zone, which record do I create?
I'd go with a zone per domain.

– David

Which records would I need? TXT, CNAME or A/AAA?

I'm not searching with the right keywords 'cause I'm not seeing anything in these forums. Sorry. A google search said not to ever use CNAME so I'm assuming its going to be an A/AAAA record?

I went ahead and created a new A record like this:

Hostname: www.mydomain.com

IP: 12.234.56.78

TTL: Default

Would this be correct? Can I now use the new domain with the same IP address as the original IP address? My goal is to use one Linode to host two sites.

@lighthammer:

Which records would I need? TXT, CNAME or A/AAA?
I figured you just wanted to set up another domain to map to Google Apps and validate (so just the same set of MX and TXT records as before), but I think I misinterpreted the question…

@lighthammer:

Would this be correct? Can I now use the new domain with the same IP address as the original IP address? My goal is to use one Linode to host two sites.
Yes, presuming that www.mydomain.com is your new domain, and 12.234.56.78 is your Linode's public address it should be fine. There's no problem with multiple DNS names all having A records returning a single IP address.

If you also want to be able to reference just "mydomain.com" (no www) you'll want the same A record associated with just mydomain.com, or use a CNAME to map mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com (or vice versa).

Alternatively (in lieu of any extra A records) you could also use a CNAME to make www.mydomain.com map to the other domain name of your Linode. That way you only have to keep the actual IP address in one place in DNS.

– David

Note that you cannot use a CNAME for "mydomain.com", as there will be non-CNAME records there (at least an SOA and an NS) and that is prohibited for CNAMEs. So, you're going to have to have an A record with the IP address there anyway in most cases.