Pages domain verification and HTTPS fail for a domain on reg.ru nameservers (TXT record is publicly resolvable)

[tarkh]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Pages

Body

Summary

I cannot verify tarkh.com for GitHub Pages, and "Enforce HTTPS" stays unavailable for my Pages site at w.tarkh.com. The TXT challenge record has been publicly resolvable for more than 3 days, but "Verify" keeps returning:

We were unable to verify ownership of tarkh.com. We couldn't find the TXT record.

There are at least two other recent reports with the same symptoms, and all three domains use the same nameservers (ns1.reg.ru / ns2.reg.ru):

• GitHub Pages: DNS check and domain verification fail for 13mirrors.ru #209249 (13mirrors.ru, failing since Sep 27)
• GitHub Pages TLS certificate stuck at "Certificate Requested" (step 1 of 3) for 17+ hours #208837 (b2china.ru, Sep 26)

This looks like GitHub's DNS checks not getting answers from the reg.ru nameservers, rather than a misconfiguration on the user side.

Setup

• Account: tarkh (user account, not an organization)
• Repository: tarkh/w-website, deployed with GitHub Actions
• Custom domain: w.tarkh.com, CNAME to tarkh.github.io
• Nameservers of tarkh.com: ns1.reg.ru, ns2.reg.ru
• No CAA records on tarkh.com
• The site is served correctly over HTTP at http://w.tarkh.com/

What resolves publicly

$ dig +short TXT _github-pages-challenge-tarkh.tarkh.com @8.8.8.8
"57161989875bad115e1b1053d1b806"

The answer is the same from 1.1.1.1. The value matches the one shown in Settings → Pages → "Continue verifying".

w.tarkh.com resolves to tarkh.github.io and then to 185.199.108.153, 185.199.109.153, 185.199.110.153 and 185.199.111.153.

What GitHub reports

• Settings → Pages (profile): verification fails with the message above.

• Settings → Pages (repository): "Enforce HTTPS" is unavailable.

• GET /repos/tarkh/w-website/pages/health returns 202 Accepted with an empty body ({}) on every call and never reaches 200. Example: Sat, 10 Oct 2026 15:37:53 GMT, request ID C81A:1927B5:299437:4264C8:6ACA5BD0.

• GET /repos/tarkh/w-website/pages returns no https_certificate object at all, so a certificate request has apparently never been started:

  "cname": "w.tarkh.com",
  "html_url": "http://w.tarkh.com/",
  "build_type": "workflow",
  "protected_domain_state": "unverified",
  "pending_domain_unverified_at": null,
  "https_enforced": false
  

What I have tried

• Waited more than 24 hours after adding the TXT record.
• Removed and re-added the custom domain in the repository settings; nothing changed.
• Opened a support ticket; it was closed automatically by the virtual assistant because my account has no paid support plan.

Questions

1. Can GitHub's Pages DNS checker currently reach ns1.reg.ru and ns2.reg.ru? Has anything changed on GitHub's side since late September?
2. Is there a way to re-trigger the domain verification and the certificate request for w.tarkh.com?

I can provide any additional diagnostics.