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I know it's not possible an A record to be empty, but what's a good "null" value I can set until I get a machine for the domain? Someone suggested putting localhost in the A record. Is it ok to do that?

My goal is that I don't want to expose the domain at all until I got something working, not even pointing to a blank HTML page or anything. What's the proper way to do that?

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    Perhaps if you explain what you're trying to accomplish by doing this, you'll get fewer downvotes. "null" A records are pointless to DNS resolution, which is why they don't exist aside from the 0.0.0.0 kludge. This suggests you're trying to use DNS to accomplish something outside of the standards and custom to an application.
    – Andrew B
    Aug 13, 2014 at 14:27

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It's usually best in such cases to not have a record at all. However, if you really must, 0.0.0.0 is a good choice that is relatively free from side effects.

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    It doesn't mean that at all; see RFC1122. It explicitly has no meaning as a destination address.
    – Falcon Momot
    Aug 13, 2014 at 7:40
  • @FalconMomot I don't see 0.0.0.0 mentioned anywhere in RFC1122.
    – kasperd
    Aug 13, 2014 at 7:50
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    @kasperd Section 3.2.1.3, page 29, lines 17 through 21. It's old (and esoteric!), but remains normative and continues to be cited in new RFCs.
    – Falcon Momot
    Aug 13, 2014 at 8:08
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    @FalconMomot I never saw that notation before. It did not occur to me that I might have to search for { 0, 0 } in order to find that address within the document.
    – kasperd
    Aug 13, 2014 at 8:15
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If you don't want your DNS server to return anything for a particular name, just remove the record in question.

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    It is always possible to remove the A record. In your question, you tell that an empty value is impossible, that is true. Removing an A-record is definitely possible.
    – Tero Kilkanen
    Aug 13, 2014 at 11:31
  • What if i already have a wildcard record that points to some address, but I don't wan't for the specific A record to point to that same address?
    – inemanja
    Oct 13, 2023 at 15:29
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    @inemanja You can use a CNAME for that specific name, it will have priority over the wildcard. Now your question becomes "what is a good "null" CNAME target", to which you might get lots of different views. The TLD invalid does exist though (RFC2606) and could be leveraged for that.
    – Patrick Mevzek
    Nov 16, 2023 at 0:03

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