For anyone else trying to figure out the error “The name server is not sufficient or hasn’t been approved.” from the status section on 1&1’s DNS control panel, I’ll tell you the answer. Or, at least, what worked for me.
I had put in a complete hostname for the DNS servers, and 1and1 came back with this “The name server is not sufficient or hasn’t been approved” stuff. Insufficient and unapproved nameservers? Is that the worst error message ever? How can a DNS server be insufficient, as long as it’s providing DNS resolution? Who needs to approve a DNS server before it can be used? It’s all crazy talk.
Turns out 1&1 didn’t like the dot I put at the end of the name. Being used to using exact notation for DNS updates, I entered the domain’s DNS servers as “ns1.domain.com.” and “ns2.domain.com.” with that trailing period. Despite the RFC-proven correctness, 1&1 doesn’t like it.
Take out the trailing dot, and they accepted the servers just fine. Somehow the same servers immediately became both approved and sufficient. Yay for sufficient name servers! Isn’t that a funky looking lolcat with his sufficient DNS? No, that’s broccoli, never mind. I get broccoli confused with DNS far too often…