projectdiscovery/subfinder · error

timeout cannot be zero

Error message

timeout cannot be zero

What it means

Sanity check in Options.validateOptions: the -timeout value per source query is zero (unset or explicitly 0), which would make every passive-source HTTP request fail or hang immediately. A positive timeout is required before enumeration begins.

Solutions

1. Supply a positive timeout such as -timeout 30 (seconds)
2. When constructing Options in code, default options.Timeout to a positive value before validation

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at pkg/runner/validate.go:35 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

Understand the failure class

• Timeouts: ETIMEDOUT, deadlines, and hung requests — what actually expires when a request times out.

AI-assisted analysis of projectdiscovery/subfinder@7a0b91f0fa (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/32f1f59172896d65. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at pkg/runner/validate.go:35

// validateOptions validates the configuration options passed
func (options *Options) validateOptions() error {
	// Check if domain, list of domains, or stdin info was provided.
	// If none was provided, then return.
	if len(options.Domain) == 0 && options.DomainsFile == "" && !options.Stdin {
		return errors.New("no input list provided")
	}

	// Both verbose and silent flags were used
	if options.Verbose && options.Silent {
		return errors.New("both verbose and silent mode specified")
	}

	// Validate threads and options
	if options.Threads == 0 {
		return errors.New("threads cannot be zero")
	}
	if options.Timeout == 0 {
		return errors.New("timeout cannot be zero")
	}

	// Always remove wildcard with hostip
	if options.HostIP && !options.RemoveWildcard {
		return errors.New("hostip flag must be used with RemoveWildcard option")
	}

	// The per-source results limit cannot be negative.
	if options.MaxResults < 0 {
		return fmt.Errorf("max-results cannot be negative")
	}

	// The response body size limit cannot be negative.
	if options.MaxResponseBodySize < 0 {
		return fmt.Errorf("response-size-read cannot be negative")
	}

	if options.Match != nil {

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