Sometimes you want to move a domain but you don’t have a copy of the zone file in order to recreate records. The easy way to do this is to grab a zone transfer. To do so, dig is your friend:
dig -tAXFR mycompany.com
Sometimes though (and actually more often than not) a zone transfer is disabled. In that case you’ll need to dig the domain a bit differently. I like to use +nocmd, query for any and list the results (+answer):
dig +nocmd https://krypted.com/ any +answer
Which results in the following:
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 39183
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 6, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0;; QUESTION SECTION:
;krypted.com. IN ANY;; ANSWER SECTION:
krypted.com. 1262 IN A 97.74.215.39
krypted.com. 3600 IN MX 0 smtp.secureserver.net.
krypted.com. 3600 IN MX 10 mailstore1.secureserver.net.
krypted.com. 3600 IN NS ns25.domaincontrol.com.
krypted.com. 3600 IN NS ns26.domaincontrol.com.
krypted.com. 3600 IN SOA ns25.domaincontrol.com. dns.jomax.net. 2010010400 28800 7200 604800 3600;; Query time: 127 msec
;; SERVER: 4.2.2.2#53(4.2.2.2)
;; WHEN: Tue May 7 22:31:15 2013
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 207
The above shows the naked domain name entry (yes, I still giggle every time I write the word naked so it’s ok if you giggled when you read it), all of the mail (which btw I don’t actually use that mail so please don’t try and send any at this time) and the ns servers. Now, the serial and refresh information isn’t included in this output. Actually, it is but it might not make sense, so we’ll just add the +multiline option which will make this look strangely like a zone file:
dig +nocmd https://krypted.com/ any +multiline +answer
Notice the serial, refresh, retry, expire and minimum options are now listed in a much more fashionable way:
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 10965
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 6, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0;; QUESTION SECTION:
;krypted.com. IN ANY;; ANSWER SECTION:
krypted.com. 3225 IN A 97.74.215.39
krypted.com. 3225 IN MX 0 smtp.secureserver.net.
krypted.com. 3225 IN MX 10 mailstore1.secureserver.net.
krypted.com. 3225 IN NS ns25.domaincontrol.com.
krypted.com. 3225 IN NS ns26.domaincontrol.com.
krypted.com. 3225 IN SOA ns25.domaincontrol.com. dns.jomax.net. (
2010010400 ; serial
28800 ; refresh (8 hours)
7200 ; retry (2 hours)
604800 ; expire (1 week)
3600 ; minimum (1 hour)
);; Query time: 22 msec
;; SERVER: 4.2.2.2#53(4.2.2.2)
;; WHEN: Tue May 7 22:32:20 2013
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 207
And there ya’ go. You’ve basically done a zone transfer on a box, even though zone transfers are disabled. Silly DNS admins, disabling zone transfers and all that… Yes, I disable zone transfers on most of my DNS boxen as well, or at least only allow them for specific IPs… 😉