It's amazing how the little things makes things hell for the rest of the people! :( Thanks Henrik! :)
Jason Chambers IT Helpdesk Support Geosoft Inc. 85 Richmond St. West - 8th Floor Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5H 2C9 Tel: 416-369-0111 x344 Fax: 416-369-9599 www.geosoft.com
-----Original Message----- From: Henrik Stoerner [mailto:henrik at hswn.dk] Sent: June-30-06 12:23 PM To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: Re: [hobbit] whois to act like sslcert?
On Fri, Jun 30, 2006 at 11:36:45AM -0400, Jason Chambers wrote:
Is there any way to get a whois type function to act like sslcert to warn you when your dns is about to expire? I know it sounds cheesy, but I thought it would be a neat idea.
I agree it would be neat, but unfortunately the "whois" protocol is completely machine-unfriendly. The only way to get the information would be to do a "whois DOMAINNAME" and try and find the expiration date. But there is no sure way of identifying those data.
Besides, many "whois" servers limit the number of queries allowed. So querying them every 5 minutes would probably raise a few eyebrows.
And finally, some "whois" servers just restrict access to all of the information, showing you only whether the domain is registered or not.
So I'd suggest you write a custom script for this. I've attached one which works at least for .dk, .com and .co.uk registrations. It's probably wise to run this only once a day.
Regards, Henrik