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I have about 20 domains "pointing" to my server via A-type DNS records, now that I am moving servers I found it rather tedious to change the IP addresses for all of them and thought that adding a CName would make more sense.

I cannot, however, figure out how to add a CNAME-type record for the domain name itself, and not any subdomains (I am using xname.org as my DNS provider).

So what exactly to I put into the Alias field for the TLD itself?

thanks!

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You can't - it's not allowed to put a CNAME in the apex of a domain (i.e in the same place as the NS and SOA records).

See ยง3.6.2 of RFC 1034

If a CNAME RR is present at a node, no other data should be present; this ensures that the data for a canonical name and its aliases cannot be different

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Why not? it makes total sense to have – clops Sep 27 '10 at 9:51
foo.com -> someotherhost.com www.foo.com -> someotherhost.com – clops Sep 27 '10 at 9:51
@clops: The quote from RFC 1034 already explains why. DNS would have to either a) merge the SOA and NS records of foo.com and someotherhost.com (breaks stuff), b) only display SOA/NS of someotherhost.com (breaks stuff), or c) only display SOA/NS of foo.com (breaks stuff). – grawity Sep 27 '10 at 19:02
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