You have an old DNS server: tallboy.example.org
You have a new DNS server: ns1.example.org
You have a domain, example.com, for which you want to swap the old DNS server with the new DNS using nsupdate.
NOTE: the domain is example.com
The NS servers are in example.org (different domains).
These are the commands you issue:
update delete example.com. IN NS tallboy.example.org. update add example.com. 3600 IN NS ns1.example.org. send
Of note, you mention the domain first, the NS server second.
This took me a while to figure out tonight.
You will also want to update the records with your domain registrar.
Congratulations on being the #1 google result for “nsupdate NS record”. Thought I recognized this name from somewhere. Oh, right, it’s from when I googled “nsupdate SOA record” and your gist was the #2 result.
Crazy that they have such comprehensive docs but the section on nsupdate is just the manpage verbatim with no examples for SOA and NS records.
Reading over my article, I see it’s short and terse. That’s usually because I was so pissed off at how difficult it was to discover the solution that I wanted to blog about it. RIGHT NOW.
Some stuff is so cryptic. Practical examples are always appropriate.
Just SHOW ME ONE example to get me going with this, then I can adopt it to what I need.
Thank you for coming to to my TED talk.
Also, glad it helped.