Wildcard Domains in zone file?

[Kevin Darcy]

Wildcards aren't "undocumented". See RFC 1034, Section 4.3.3. The trouble
is, the behavior of non-leftmost wildcarding is unspecified -- the
RFC doesn't appear to actually *forbid* them -- and therefore the
"feature" is unimplemented.

Is there any particular reason why you don't just use "*"? It'll match any
of those "www.[username]" names just as well as what you're apparently
trying to do. The only drawback is that it will also match *other*, perhaps
unwanted, permutations. But offhand I don't see how this would cause a
problem for your mod_rewrite rule...


- Kevin

vortex at NOSPAMcaffeine-dot-org.uk wrote:

> 'lo,
>
> After being informed by a colleague that I could use "wildcard"
> domains in a BIND zone file, eg:
>
> *       IN A 195.184.236.248
>
> I decided I'd try and implement this, in conjunction with an Apache
> mod_rewrite rule (in the mod_rewrite bit of the Apache FAQ if anyone's
> interested) to give users on my system
> "www.[username].caffeine.org.uk" usernames, which I assumed I could
> accomplish with:
>
> www.*   IN A 195.184.236.248
>
> However, for some reason, the wildcard feature only works if it's the
> first character on the line, eg.
>
> *.foo   IN A 195.184.236.248
>
> ...allows any *.foo.caffeine.org.uk name to resolve... but for some
> reason I can't get it working when the wildcard is prefixed.
>
> Any ideas on this (seemingly) undocumented feature and how it can work
> for the above situation?
>
> Thanks in advance for any help,
>
> PS. Running 8.2.2-P5...
>
> --
> vortex at caffeine dot org dot uk | http://www2.caffeine.org.uk/~vortex/