check-whois

Go-based tooling to monitor WHOIS records.

Table of Contents

• Project home
• Overview
  • check_whois
    • Performance Data
• Features
• Changelog
• Requirements
  • Building source code
  • Running
• Installation
  • From source
  • Using release binaries
• Configuration
  • Command-line arguments
    • check_whois
• Examples
  • OK result
  • WARNING result
  • CRITICAL result
• License
• References
  • Related projects
  • Dependencies
  • General

Project home

See our GitHub repo for the latest code, to file an issue or submit improvements for review and potential inclusion into the project.

Overview

This repo is intended to provide various tools used to monitor WHOIS.

Tool Name	Overall Status	Description
check_whois	Alpha	Nagios plugin used to monitor expiration of WHOIS records

check_whois

Nagios plugin used to monitor expiration of WHOIS records.

The output for this application is designed to provide the one-line summary needed by Nagios for quick identification of a problem while providing longer, more detailed information for use in email and Teams notifications (atc0005/send2teams).

Performance Data

Initial support has been added for emitting Performance Data / Metrics, but refinement suggestions are welcome.

Consult the tables below for the metrics implemented thus far.

Please add to an existing Discussion thread (if applicable) or open a new one with any feedback that you may have. Thanks in advance!

Emitted Performance Data / Metric	Unit of Measurement	Meaning
time	seconds	Runtime for plugin
expiration	days	Until domain expires.
since_update	days	Since domain was last updated.
since_creation	days	Since domain was first created.

Features

• Nagios plugin for monitoring expiration of WHOIS records

• Optional use of custom WHOIS server

• Optional disabling of referral lookups

• Optional branding "signature"

  • used to indicate what Nagios plugin (and what version) is responsible for the service check result

• Optional, leveled logging using rs/zerolog package

  • logfmt format output (to stderr)
  • choice of disabled, panic, fatal, error, warn, info (the default), debug or trace.

Changelog

See the CHANGELOG.md file for the changes associated with each release of this application. Changes that have been merged to master, but not yet an official release may also be noted in the file under the Unreleased section. A helpful link to the Git commit history since the last official release is also provided for further review.

Requirements

The following is a loose guideline. Other combinations of Go and operating systems for building and running tools from this repo may work, but have not been tested.

Building source code

• Go
  • see this project's go.mod file for preferred version
  • this project tests against officially supported Go releases
    • the most recent stable release (aka, "stable")
    • the prior, but still supported release (aka, "oldstable")
• GCC
  • if building with custom options (as the provided Makefile does)
• make
  • if using the provided Makefile

Running

• Windows 10+
• Ubuntu Linux 18.04+

Installation

From source

1. Download Go
2. Install Go
3. Clone the repo
   1. cd /tmp
   2. git clone https://github.com/atc0005/check-whois
   3. cd check-whois
4. Install dependencies (optional)
   • for Ubuntu Linux
     • sudo apt-get install make gcc
   • for CentOS Linux
     1. sudo yum install make gcc
5. Build
   • for current operating system
     • go build -mod=vendor ./cmd/check_whois/
       • forces build to use bundled dependencies in top-level vendor folder
   • for all supported platforms (where make is installed)
     • make all
   • for Windows
     • make windows
   • for Linux
     • make linux
6. Locate generated binaries
   • if using Makefile
     • look in /tmp/check-whois/release_assets/check_whois/
   • if using go build
     • look in /tmp/check-whois/
7. Copy the applicable binaries to whatever systems needs to run them
8. Deploy
   • Place check_whois in the same location where your distro's package manager has place other Nagios plugins
     • as /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_whois on Debian-based systems
     • as /usr/lib64/nagios/plugins/check_whois on RedHat-based systems

NOTE: Depending on which Makefile recipe you use the generated binary may be compressed and have an xz extension. If so, you should decompress the binary first before deploying it (e.g., xz -d check_whois-linux-amd64.xz).

Using release binaries

1. Download the latest release binaries
2. Decompress binaries
   • e.g., xz -d check_whois-linux-amd64.xz
3. Deploy
   • Place check_whois in the same location where your distro's package manager places other Nagios plugins
     • as /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_whois on Debian-based systems
     • as /usr/lib64/nagios/plugins/check_whois on RedHat-based systems

NOTE:

DEB and RPM packages are provided as an alternative to manually deploying binaries.

Configuration

Command-line arguments

• Use the -h or --help flag to display current usage information.
• Flags marked as required must be set via CLI flag.
• Flags not marked as required are for settings where a useful default is already defined, but may be overridden if desired.

check_whois

Flag	Required	Default	Repeat	Possible	Description
branding	No	false	No	branding	Toggles emission of branding details with plugin status details. This output is disabled by default.
h, help	No	false	No	h, help	Show Help text along with the list of supported flags.
v, version	No	false	No	v, version	Whether to display application version and then immediately exit application.
c, age-critical	No	15	No	positive whole number of days	The number of days remaining before domain expiration when a CRITICAL state is triggered.
w, age-warning	No	30	No	positive whole number of days	The number of days remaining before domain expiration when a WARNING state is triggered.
ll, log-level	No	info	No	disabled, panic, fatal, error, warn, info, debug, trace	Log message priority filter. Log messages with a lower level are ignored.
d, domain	Yes		No	domain name	The name of the domain whose WHOIS records will be evaluated.
s, server	No		No	valid WHOIS server fqdn	The name of the optional domain registrar WHOIS server to use for queries.
disable-ref-lookups	No	false	No	true, false	Disables WHOIS server referral lookups. Lookups are enabled by default.

Examples

OK result

This example uses default age thresholds to check the expiration date for the specified domain. Since the expiration occurs after those default thresholds, the result is considered OK.

$ ./check_whois --domain "google.com"
OK: "google.com" domain registration has 2602d 18h remaining


**ERRORS**

* None

**THRESHOLDS**

* CRITICAL: Expires before 2021-08-14 09:31:39 +0000 UTC (15 days)
* WARNING: Expires before 2021-08-29 09:31:39 +0000 UTC (30 days)

**DETAILED INFO**

WHOIS metadata for "google.com" domain:

* Status: [clientdeleteprohibited, clienttransferprohibited, clientupdateprohibited, serverdeleteprohibited, servertransferprohibited, serverupdateprohibited]
* Creation Date: 2028-09-14 04:00:00 +0000 UTC
* Updated Date: 2019-09-09 15:39:04 +0000 UTC
* Expiration Date: 2028-09-14 04:00:00 +0000 UTC
* Registrar Name: MarkMonitor Inc.
* Registrant Name:
* Registrant Email: select request email form at https://domains.markmonitor.com/whois/google.com

WARNING result

This example uses explicit age thresholds to simulate a domain that is expiring soon, but hasn't yet crossed the final CRITICAL age threshold. The result is considered to be a WARNING state.

$ ./check_whois --domain "microsoft.com" --age-warning 365 --age-critical 120
{"level":"warn","version":"check-whois x.y.z (https://github.com/atc0005/check-whois)","logging_level":"info","domain":"microsoft.com","time":"2021-07-30T04:40:08-05:00","caller":"/mnt/t/github/check-whois/cmd/check_whois/main.go:142","message":"Domain is expiring"}
WARNING: "microsoft.com" domain registration has 276d 18h remaining


**ERRORS**

* domain is expiring

**THRESHOLDS**

* CRITICAL: Expires before 2021-11-27 09:40:08 +0000 UTC (120 days)
* WARNING: Expires before 2022-07-30 09:40:08 +0000 UTC (365 days)

**DETAILED INFO**

WHOIS metadata for "microsoft.com" domain:

* Status: [clientdeleteprohibited, clienttransferprohibited, clientupdateprohibited, serverdeleteprohibited, servertransferprohibited, serverupdateprohibited]
* Creation Date: 2022-05-03 04:00:00 +0000 UTC
* Updated Date: 2021-03-12 23:25:32 +0000 UTC
* Expiration Date: 2022-05-03 04:00:00 +0000 UTC
* Registrar Name: MarkMonitor Inc.
* Registrant Name: Domain Administrator
* Registrant Email: admin@domains.microsoft

CRITICAL result

This example uses explicit age thresholds to simulate a domain that is expiring soon and has crossed the final CRITICAL age threshold. The result is considered to be a CRITICAL state.

The domain is expected to expire soon without direct intervention from the current domain owner.

$ ./check_whois --domain "godaddy.com" --age-warning 365 --age-critical 120
{"level":"warn","version":"check-whois x.y.z (https://github.com/atc0005/check-whois)","logging_level":"info","domain":"godaddy.com","time":"2021-07-30T04:41:06-05:00","caller":"/mnt/t/github/check-whois/cmd/check_whois/main.go:142","message":"Domain is expiring"}
CRITICAL: "godaddy.com" domain registration has 94d 2h remaining


**ERRORS**

* domain is expiring

**THRESHOLDS**

* CRITICAL: Expires before 2021-11-27 09:41:06 +0000 UTC (120 days)
* WARNING: Expires before 2022-07-30 09:41:06 +0000 UTC (365 days)

**DETAILED INFO**

WHOIS metadata for "godaddy.com" domain:

* Status: [clientdeleteprohibited, clientrenewprohibited, clienttransferprohibited, clientupdateprohibited, serverdeleteprohibited, servertransferprohibited, serverupdateprohibited]
* Creation Date: 2021-11-01 11:59:59 +0000 UTC
* Updated Date: 2020-04-07 14:26:27 +0000 UTC
* Expiration Date: 2021-11-01 11:59:59 +0000 UTC
* Registrar Name: GoDaddy.com, LLC
* Registrant Name:
* Registrant Email: select contact domain holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=godaddy.com

License

MIT License

Copyright 2021 Adam Chalkley

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

References

Related projects

• https://github.com/atc0005/send2teams
• https://github.com/atc0005/check-whois
• https://github.com/atc0005/check-illiad
• https://github.com/atc0005/check-mail
• https://github.com/atc0005/check-path
• https://github.com/atc0005/check-vmware
• https://github.com/atc0005/nagios-debug
• https://github.com/atc0005/go-nagios

Dependencies

• https://github.com/likexian/whois
• https://github.com/likexian/whois-parser
• https://github.com/rs/zerolog
• https://github.com/atc0005/go-nagios

General

• https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db