Occasionally I need to link a domain parked at Namecheap to a Linode and each time I forget how to do it. Thus, here is a guide (i.e. a cheat-sheet for me).

Linode part

  1. Open Linode account dashboard.
  2. Click “Create” dropdown and select “Domain”.
  3. Choose “Master”.
  4. Type the domain (without www).
  5. Enter some email as “SOA Email Address” (this will be public, e.g. can be looked up with this tool).
  6. “Do not insert default records for me”. Alternatively you can select “Insert default records from one of my Linodes” and select the target Linode machine.
  7. Click “Create” button.

Once you linked a domain to your account, you can connect it to a specific Linode:

  1. Open Linode account dashboard.
  2. Copy the target Linode machine IPv4 address.
  3. Open “Domains” on the left.
  4. Select the target domain.
  5. Add A/AAAA record with the IPv4 address and empty hostname.
  6. Copy IPv6 address.
  7. Add A/AAAA record with the IPv6 address and empty hostname.

Namecheap part

  1. Go to a given domain dashboard.
  2. Set “Nameservers” to “Custom DNS” (by default it is Namecheap BasicDNS).
  3. Add “ns1.linode.com”, “ns2.linode.com” and so on up to “ns5.linode.com” as nameservers (source).
  4. To save, click at the green checkmark (righthand side from “Custom DNS” dropdown).
  5. Wait until the change is propagated across the world (1-2 days, but often 5-10 minutes can be enough).

Further reading