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Overview

This guide covers user-facing DNS issues: zones stuck in error states, records not resolving after creation, PTR record failures, and CNAME conflicts. For platform-level issues such as service outages or nameserver synchronization failures, see the Admin Troubleshooting guide.

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Common Issues

Zone stuck in PENDING or ERROR status

Cause: The DNS backend could not create the zone due to a configuration conflict or backend connectivity issue.Diagnosis:
Show zone detail with action and status
openstack zone show example.com. \
  -c name -c status -c action
Resolution:
  • If status is ERROR, check whether a zone with the same name already exists under a different project. The DNS service prevents duplicate zone names across all projects.
  • Contact your platform administrator if the zone remains in ERROR after the conflicting zone is removed.
  • If the zone shows action: CREATE and status: PENDING for more than 60 seconds, the DNS worker may be unable to reach the backend nameserver pool.
Cause: DNS propagation is still in progress, or the client resolver is caching a negative (NXDOMAIN) response from before the record was created.Diagnosis:
Query the authoritative nameserver directly
dig @<nameserver-ip> www.example.com A
Resolution:
  • If the authoritative nameserver returns the correct value, the record was created successfully. The issue is resolver caching.
  • Flush the local resolver cache:
    Flush resolver cache (Linux)
    systemd-resolve --flush-caches
  • If the authoritative nameserver also returns NXDOMAIN, verify the record set status:
    Check record set status
    openstack recordset show example.com. www
    A status of ERROR indicates a backend provisioning failure — contact your platform administrator.
Cause: The reverse zone for the IP range has not been created or delegated to the Xloud DNS service.Diagnosis:
Show PTR record error
openstack ptr record show <region>:<floating-ip-id>
Resolution: Contact your platform administrator to verify that the reverse zone for the IP range is provisioned in the DNS service and that nameserver delegation is configured correctly for the in-addr.arpa. or ip6.arpa. parent zone.
Cause: A CNAME cannot coexist with other record types at the same name. If an A or MX record already exists at the target name, the CNAME creation fails.Diagnosis:
List all records at the target name
openstack recordset list example.com. | grep <target-name>
Resolution:
  • Delete any conflicting record sets at the target hostname before creating the CNAME.
  • Note that CNAMEs cannot be created at the zone apex (@) — use an A record or contact your administrator about ALIAS record support for root domain aliases.
Cause: Different clients are hitting different resolvers with different cache states, or the zone’s SOA serial number has not been incremented.Diagnosis:
Check SOA serial on the authoritative nameserver
dig @<nameserver-ip> example.com. SOA
Compare this serial number with what recursive resolvers have cached:
Query a public resolver
dig @8.8.8.8 example.com. SOA
Resolution:
  • If serials match, the update has propagated — wait for resolver TTL to expire.
  • If serials differ, the zone update has not yet synchronized to the queried nameserver. Wait for the zone’s TTL, or contact your administrator to verify nameserver sync.
Cause: The zone contains record sets that must be removed first, or a transfer request for this zone is pending.Resolution:
List all record sets in the zone
openstack recordset list example.com.
Delete non-SOA and non-NS records, then retry the zone deletion. If a transfer request is pending, cancel it first:
List and delete transfer requests
openstack zone transfer request list
openstack zone transfer request delete <transfer-id>

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Diagnostic Commands

openstack zone show example.com.

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Next Steps

Admin Troubleshooting

Platform-level DNS issues — API outages, worker failures, nameserver sync errors

Create a Zone

Start fresh with a properly configured zone

Manage Records

Add or correct record sets in an existing zone

Reverse DNS

Configure PTR records for your IP addresses