Addon domains that require DNS zones before registering

[sparek-3]

cPanel uses a system of verifying someone owns a domain name by checking it's nameservers before allowing that domain name to be added as an addon domain in the user's cPanel. I understand the policy for this. It's meant to insure that users don't just add random domains to their account that they have no control of. Think of if someone added hotmail.com as an addon domain to their account - they could then steal all mail sent from that server to @hotmail.com email addresses. (Although to be clear, hotmail.com is popular enough that it's prevented through a separate common domain list).

But what do you do in instances where a domain name cannot be registered and set to specific nameservers unless those nameservers return a valid DNS zone? This results in an endless loop of failures:

Domain cannot be added to the cPanel account because the domain is not using the server's nameservers.

Domain cannot be set to server's nameservers because no DNS zone exists for domain on those nameservers.

What is the recommended workaround for this scenario?

I suppose enabling:

Allow Unregistered Domains
Allow Remote Domains

would be options - although less than ideal.

 

[cPRex]

Hey there! That's what I do, just enable those options and create the domains. You could just do it temporarily while you perform that specific work, or leave it set forever if you know that particular server won't get any weird activity.

 

[rbairwell]

If you have WHM access as root, you should still be able to add those via either DNS Functions->"Add a DNS Zone" or DNS Functions->"Park a Domain" (along with being able to create an account using root's WHM with unregistered/not set up domains).

Alternatively, if you are moving domains from existing name servers and there are quite a few of them, you should be able to add their IP addresses to IP Functions->Configuration Remote Service IPs->Remote Name Server IPs (or add them to /etc/ips.remotedns ) - see Configure Remote Service IPs | cPanel & WHM Documentation - and cPanel should treat those domains as "safe" as they are on known nameservers.