Downloading a zone file from the internet?

Hi all,
I am about to take over name services for a domain. The client wants to setup our services before the current operator is to be informed about the upcoming change.

How can I download the entire zone file for my client's domain? I can make nslookups and find some hosts, but I'll never be sure if I found them all. Downloading the complete zone file, or requesting its complete contents from their DNS server would be the best solution.

Sorry if this is trivial. I'm a newby, here

 

I don't think you'll manage to download the entire zone file for a particular domain for the simple reason that today's DNS servers will only transfer zone files to only explicitly allowed host machines.

IMO, the best way to get the zone file(s) is to gently ask the admins who currently host the zone file(s)

 

or you might gently offer them to be their slave dns at first, than you have a copy of their zone

 

Yeah... that would be nice. A bit suspicious but nice.

Too bad that their nslookup does not allow the ls command.

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions.

 

You can check here -> domain-db.org

 

Why you don't do on the command line :
dig any domainname.com
Then you have all the dns records.

 

I have only used alldomainsdb.com so far, but it was a while back. I needed the .it zone file ns records, bought it and that's all. Perhaps they can be useful for you too.