Hover Domain pointed to vercel not working

Help
,
1

I have about 6 domains ans several projects in both a hobby and Pro account. The 3 hobby projects with domains I added a few months ago all work fine. on June 3 and June 4 I created a pro account and added a new project to it.

  • I then added the first domain, ninthplanet.software with the redirect to the www
  • I copied the IP address for the A record and updated that in my Hover.com dashboard for the domain’s DNS records.
  • I also added the CNAME record.
  • The next day (June 4) I also added ninthplanetsoftware.com as another domain on the project, same setup with the A record and CNAME.

As of today, June 8, neither domain is resolving.

I’ve reached out to hover support as well, just to see if they notice any problems on their end.

yesterday I was attempting to debug the issue using both Vercel’s AI help agent and Google’s. I ran dig +trace and dig +dnssec because one of them was saying I had DNSSEC turned on but was missing records. But I never activated dnssec and my control panel at hover showed NO dnssec records.

As an experiment, I added a fake DNSSEC record, and deleted it within a few minutes, on both domains. After that, no more reports of dnssec but the domains still won’t resolve.

I saw a suggestion of removing / re-adding the domains and I just tried that. I removed all domains and re-added ninthplanetsoftware.com and it’s still not working.

current behavior: domains don’t resolve to vercel project

expected behavior: domains should resolve to vercel project

2

The domain troubleshooting guide can help with most custom domain configuration issues. You might be able to use that guide to solve it before a human is available to help you. Then you can come back here and share the answer for bonus points.

You can also use v0 to narrow down the possibilities.

3

I’ve already read through the domain troubleshooting guide and it did not help. In fact, it seems to be out of date because there were references to things in the interface that I don’t see.

4

Hi Keith,

Since both domains are failing to resolve and you saw DNSSEC-related warnings, I’d start by separating three things: registrar delegation, DNSSEC/DS records, and the actual A/CNAME records.

From a terminal, I’d check these for both domains:

dig NS ninthplanet.software +short
dig A ninthplanet.software +short
dig CNAME www.ninthplanet.software +short
dig DS ninthplanet.software +short

dig NS ninthplanetsoftware.com +short
dig A ninthplanetsoftware.com +short
dig CNAME www.ninthplanetsoftware.com +short
dig DS ninthplanetsoftware.com +short

The important part is that the NS output should point to the nameservers for the DNS provider where you are actually editing records. If Hover is still authoritative, then the A/CNAME records need to be in Hover. If Vercel nameservers are authoritative, then editing records in Hover’s DNS zone would not affect resolution.

For the apex domains, the A record should match the value Vercel shows for each domain in the project. For www, the CNAME should match the Vercel target exactly. I’d also check that there are no leftover AAAA records, duplicate A records, or a DS record at the registrar from the DNSSEC experiment. A stale/bad DS record can cause resolution failures even if the normal DNS records look correct in the provider dashboard.

One more useful check:

dig +trace ninthplanet.software
dig +trace ninthplanetsoftware.com

If the trace fails before reaching Hover/Vercel nameservers, it is likely a delegation or DNSSEC issue. If the trace reaches the correct nameservers but the A/CNAME values are missing or different, then it is a DNS zone record issue.

Can you share the output of the NS, A, CNAME, and DS commands for one of the domains?

5

Hey Ryu, thanks for the reply.

The AI support bot ran some checks this morning and concluded that everything is setup correctly in both hover DNS settings and vercel settings. It had me run the vercel debug script. I now have a case open with vercel and awaiting their reply.

I’ve removed ninthplanet.software and did not re-add it yet. Figured let’s focus on one domain to avoid confusion.

results from each dig command below. no results for CNAME, but that is definitely setup at hover. 3 other domains that are working show results for CNAME, but not 3 new ones that I setup in the past week. So now I’m wondering if there’s a propagation issue with Tucows/Hover because this is kind of ridiculously simple setup that worked for domains I setup over a month ago but not working now.

For the A records, once that was setup, Vercel’s dashboard doesn’t actually show me the IP address that it should be, just to confirm it’s correct. But I did copy it from that dashboard and pasted it into hover. And Dnschecker.org shows that it is a Vercel IP address.

I actually ran trace over the weekend after the AI support suggested it, that’s when it said there was DNSSEC setup, even though I never set that up. That’s when I added the fake record then deleted it, and subsequently the bot said it was all good.

I just ran trace and it does seem to go to hover nameservers and eventually to the A record IP address at Vercel

dig NS ninthplanetsoftware.com +short

ns2.hover.com.
ns1.hover.com.

dig A ninthplanetsoftware.com +short

216.150.1.1

dig CNAME www.ninthplanetsoftware.com +short

no results

dig DS ninthplanetsoftware.com +short

no results

dig SOA ninthplanetsoftware.com +short

ns1.hover.com. dnsmaster.hover.com. 1780679951 10800 3600 604800 300
6

looks like it’s working now and I don’t know who or what happened that it’s fixed now.

I even did a dig CNAME on both domains and they actually got a response. So I guess it’s all good.

Thanks again for your help @ryux1 I added those dig commands to my bag of tricks

  • Keith
7

For anyone else landing on this post who has the same issue, Hover seems to have a problem with trailing periods in the CNAME value.

Once we removed that, the domains started resolving.

I told them this is a failure on their end, because trailing periods are valid and in many cases, encouraged as it indicates a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN).

I’m going to mark this reply as the solution.

thanks for coming to my Ted Talk

8

Appreciate you coming back to share the solution!

9

Hi Keith,

Nice find. The dig CNAME www.ninthplanetsoftware.com +short returning no results was the key clue: Hover’s nameservers were authoritative, but the www CNAME was not actually being published publicly.

You’re also right that a trailing dot is valid DNS syntax for an FQDN. The practical problem is that some registrar/DNS dashboards expect the target without the trailing dot and then normalize it themselves. In those cases, the dashboard can look correct while the public resolver output says otherwise.

For anyone else debugging the same thing, I’d trust the public DNS result over the control panel display:

dig CNAME www.example.com +short
dig A example.com +short
dig NS example.com +short

If the www CNAME comes back blank, fix it at the authoritative DNS provider first. If it returns the Vercel CNAME target and the apex A record matches what Vercel shows, then it makes sense to look back at the Vercel domain status.