[dns] How do I get a list of all subdomains of a domain?

I want to find out all the subdomains of a given domain. I found a hint which tells me to dig the authoritative Nameserver with the following option:

dig @ns1.foo.bar some_domain.com axfr

But this never works. Has anyone a better idea/approach

You can use this site to find subdomains Find subdomains

This tool will try a zone transfer and also query search engines for list of subdomains.

In Windows nslookup the command is

ls -d somedomain.com > outfile.txt

which stores the subdomain list in outfile.txt

few domains these days allow this

If you can't get this information from DNS (e.g. you aren't authorized) then one alternative is to use Wolfram Alpha.

1. Enter the domain into the search box and run the search. (E.g. stackexchange.com)

2. In the 3rd section from the top (named "Web statistics for all of stackexchange.com") click Subdomains

3. In the Subdomains section click More

You will be able to see a list of sub-domains there. Although I suspect it does not show ALL sub-domains.

If the DNS server is configured properly, you won't be able to get the entire domain. If for some reason is allows zone transfers from any host, you'll have to send it the correct packet to make that request. I suspect that's what the dig statement you included does.

robotex tools which are free will let you do this but they make you enter the ip of the domain first:

1. find out the ip (there's a good ff plugin which does this but I can't post the link cos this is my first post here!)
2. do an ip search on robotex: http://www.robtex.com/ip/
3. in the results page that follows click on the domain you're interested in>
4. you are taken to a page that lists all subdomains + a load of other information such as mail server info

You can use:

$ host -l domain.com

Under the hood, this uses the AXFR query mentioned above. You might not be allowed to do this though. In that case, you'll get a transfer failed message.

You can only do this if you are connecting to a DNS server for the domain -and- AXFR is enabled for your IP address. This is the mechanism that secondary systems use to load a zone from the primary. In the old days, this was not restricted, but due to security concerns, most primary name servers have a whitelist of: secondary name servers + a couple special systems.

If the nameserver you are using allows this then you can use dig or nslookup.

For example:

#nslookup

>ls domain.com

NOTE: because nslookup is being deprecated for dig and other newere tools, some versions of nslookup do not support "ls", most notably Mac OS X's bundled version.

1. dig somedomain.com soa
2. dig @ns.SOA.com somedomain.com axfr