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I just moved my domains to another hoster, all works ok but just the pages I have under my wildcard domain seems not to be working / found by the server at all.

What do I need to configure next to just the dns?

What I have now;

enter image description here

// probably I did a mistake myself, I did just added the *.example.com wildcard like this, I didn't add before till I saw the server was not responding! I have to wait now for 24 hours?

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> google.com.example.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 7900
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.com.example.com.    IN  A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
example.com.    1983    IN  SOA ns0.transip.net. hostmaster.transip.nl. 2013100115 14400 1800 2419200 3600

;; Query time: 10 msec
;; SERVER: 80.84.224.249#53(80.84.224.249)
;; WHEN: Tue Oct  1 13:07:17 2013
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 117

$ nslookup google.com.example.com
Server:     80.84.224.249
Address:    80.84.224.249#53

** server can't find google.com.example.com: NXDOMAIN
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  • 2
    Isn't there a dot missing at the end, so it's "*.example.com."?
    – ott--
    Oct 1, 2013 at 10:43
  • Can you explain why there should be a dot? It's even not aloud to add a point after it, the provider throws me an error by saving the settings like that
    – user968898
    Oct 1, 2013 at 10:45
  • 2
    No dot means append domain here, while . at the end means not to do this.
    – ott--
    Oct 1, 2013 at 10:47
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    As the domain is being added automatically by their software or the DNS server (assumed, seeing as the mail/www/ftp entries are working), you may get away with just '*' on it's own. Of course it is possible their web console doesn't like/support wildcard entries
    – USD Matt
    Oct 1, 2013 at 10:50
  • exmaple.com? :)
    – user
    Oct 1, 2013 at 12:04

1 Answer 1

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I expect that the entries in those text fields are going into DNS exactly as they are.

Because they do not end in a dot, the DNS server is automatically expanding them by adding the domain name, which makes www become www.example.com. and so on.

Adding a dot to your record was suggested as this forces the DNS server to not add the domain name. Without it *.domain.com would become *.domain.com.domain.com..

You mentioned in you comments that the web console does not let you add a dot at the end of the field. Because of this, the only reasonable suggestion is to just enter * in the name field, which should be expanded by the DNS server into *.example.com..

If it doesn't let you add just an asterisk, then it's most likely that they never designed their web administration console to support wildcard entry like this. In this case, you're probably best off contacting the ISP whose control panel you are using. In fact, it may have been the most obvious course of action to contact and ask them first.

Additional Note: You mention that "the pages under your wildcard domain" don't seem to work. I would highly recommend testing the wildcard with dig or nslookup first, rather than trying to access webpages, as you're introducing more possible problems. (What if the DNS is fine and it's the web server that isn't working properly, etc, etc?) On top of this, non-existent DNS responses can be cached so it's preferable to test the entries directly against your ISP's name servers, as you may have fixed the problem but your computer may still think the entries don't exist.

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  • Thanks a lot for your answer. It was fine just to add a '*' so I did. After that I dig and nslookup from the server where this website is running on. The site is running on a .nl/.com extenstion. I did not move the .com yet and there all works fine.
    – user968898
    Oct 1, 2013 at 11:12
  • It seems to work now after 5min! I will wait a little while to take my full conclusion but other wise I will accept your answer for the great explanation.
    – user968898
    Oct 1, 2013 at 11:15
  • @user968898 The negative TTL is set to 3600 in the SOA record (according to the dig output) so NXDOMAINs should be purged from caches after one hour (3600 seconds).
    – user
    Oct 1, 2013 at 12:04

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