We have a domain, say mydomain.com and its DNS zone file is on Cloudflare. We created a host called “example” using an A record and pointed it to our server’s IP address. We don’t use Cloudflare’s web proxy at all. So the subdomain example.mydomain.com works fine, it is pointing to our server. Next we created a wildcard host ( * ) and pointed to the same IP address using A record. In other words all subdomains under mydomain.com is now pointed to our IP. So far so good. However there is a problem if we delete the A record of “example” ! This will make example.mydomain.com not to resolve at all! Even after two days, it is not resolving. It is not a temporary issue but a permanent one. The wildcard host ( * ) should cover the “example” host too. But it just doesn’t. We even deleted the wildcard host and then added it back again to see if that fixes it, but it doesn’t! So the only solution is to add back the A record for the “example” host, because the wildcard host ( * ) just won’t cover it, no matter what. And this happens not just on one host ( “example” ) but with many other hosts as well, on the same mydomain.com domain. Probably on others too, I did not try the others though. IMO Cloudflare should fix this bug. There is no way for me to contact them directly, because we are using their free plan… This is why I wrote this message here. Hopefully they’ll read it and fix it soon!
Not a bug IMHO.
I’ve followed your steps, and am unable to reproduce this. My example name continues to resolve via the wildcard record after deleting its A record. Are you querying the authoritative nameserver directly, or is there a cache or something in the way?
No matter what resolvers I use it just doesn’t work.
Check with dnschecker.org ,
Let me tell you our real domain: software4schools.com
and the subdomain is: “student”
I just deleted the A record of “student” to demonstrate the issue.
You can test here:
https://dnschecker.org/#A/student.software4schools.com
If I add back the A record for the “student” host then it works again.
At the moment the A record of student is deleted. See the records:
Then what is it? Please see the real example I posted. You can see it yourself that the wildcard record does not cover all subdomains. If it is not a bug then what is it?
Okay, the problem is that you have a TXT record (SPF) for student.
A wildcard record only works if the name you looked up has no records of any kind that exist. If you delete that TXT record it will resolve.
Thanks for this info. I would have never guessed it! We needed that TXT (SPF) record in the past. Let me think it through if we can remove that now or not. If not, then I’ll just add back the A-record for student. Thx!
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