DNS domain expiration monitoring

[potemkin_ai]

@robi thanks, here are the arguments:

• you can't cover all registars and I don't have much DNS domains, so domainmod is not exactly a thing
• another e-mail from cloudron is something, I would treat completely different, as opposed to another possible advertising e-mail from registar
• if cloudron will display big red warning at the top of the admin, when domain is about to expire in, let's say less than a week, this would save as well.

I understand, it might be a rare event, but, considering that a complete DNS update takes like 72 hours, quite a nasty one.

[msbt]

@potemkin_ai I don't get how that could happen in the first place, aren't domain renewals usually default and you have to opt-out/cancel the renewal actively?

[timconsidine]

@msbt depends on the registrar and whether auto-renewal is enabled

[potemkin_ai]

@msbt and on the client, holding DNS zone as well...

[nebulon]

I do think that is probably out of scope for Cloudron and the task of the registrar to warn appropriately about this.

[girish]

Out of curiosity, is this information even available? Is whois generally considered authoritative ? For display purposes, this seems like a good idea to me. Nice to have a summary of when domains are expiring, why not, if it's a whois call away.

[msbt]

@girish the biggest problem will be the various tlds, because there is not one whois server which can do them all, you're looking at something like https://snippens.com/handbk/whois-servers or https://www.mobilefish.com/tutorials/whois_servers_list/whois_servers_list.html

[mehdi]

WHOIS is not reliable on this at all ... I have seen several instances of whois saying a domain is about to expire when it has already been updated.

This feature would be cool, but I don't know of any way to implement this, short of having API access to various registrars.

[potemkin_ai]

it doesn't seem to be impossible thought (https://serverfault.com/questions/343941/how-can-i-find-the-whois-server-for-any-tld); and if the domain is not in whois database, you can display message, saying that your domain is not in our whois database - please, let us know what to query, if you would like us to keep you up to date with that - this way, if I'm using rare registar, who doesn't provide data to everyone, I can supply whoise server to query from this registar and be a happy user, knowing, that my Cloudron is also taking care about the DNS (without which it won't work like at all, btw).

[girish]

Looks like the whois list is available as json here - https://github.com/FurqanSoftware/node-whois/blob/master/servers.json and another here - https://github.com/weppos/whois/blob/main/data/tld.json . @potemkin_ai great link! didn't know the ways to discover whois servers.

[girish]

@mehdi said in DNS domain expiration monitoring:

This feature would be cool, but I don't know of any way to implement this, short of having API access to various registrars.

Yeah.. same, I suspect if we add this, it will be more informational than authoritative. whois is often outdated/lags. So maybe we even let the admin set the expiry date for domains with missing/wrong whois records.

[mehdi]

@potemkin_ai said in DNS domain expiration monitoring:

it doesn't seem to be impossible thought (https://serverfault.com/questions/343941/how-can-i-find-the-whois-server-for-any-tld);

You misunderstand my point : the problem is not finding the correct whois server. That is trivial. The problem is that the information in whois responses about domain registration expiration dates is, more often than not,

[potemkin_ai]

@mehdi even if, it’s better than nothing

[robi]

@mehdi @potemkin_ai

This addresses both of your concerns:

1. Checked when the domain is added to cloudron, that's fairly reliable as the pattern is new domains get added, plenty of time. 1yr+

2. Close to that expiration date for the domain from 1. , it can warn and be checked until a renewal is detected or marked renewed. Better than 72hrs.

@girish Cloudron can keep track of this in the DB and warn/update accordingly. Easy-peasy.

[mehdi]

@potemkin_ai said in DNS domain expiration monitoring:

@mehdi even if, it’s better than nothing

I honestly don't believe so : a check that has more false-positives than true positives is not very useful... It would worry people about nothing all the time.

[potemkin_ai]

@mehdi we definitely have a different perspective here.

I believe, that giving me a chance to prevent service shutdown for 72 hours for the outside world is a very valuable thing.

I also like the idea of fetching fresh data from whois on expiration data and letting me to correct whois server or the expiration data itself.

There is little I can do to turn you into my faith, I'm just saying what I see and experience.

[d19dotca]

@potemkin_ai I'd be in favour of Cloudron adding in some nice-to-have like a domain expiry notification if it has that access but also only if it's feasible to include in the first place. I wouldn't want that taking away hours from the Cloudron team.

Ultimately though as I see it, the trigger for this feature request seems like more of an issue with notifications from the registrar which is well outside of Cloudron's scope.

Additionally the result of losing a domain can easily be avoided by enabling auto-renew. I recognize Auto-Renew isn't for everyone (some people don't like having credit cards on file for instance) but it's used by the vast majority and is quite literally designed to avoid this very issue. If the risk of losing a domain is too high, then auto-renew should be used.

Also, a simple Calendar entry can help. I have my Calendar with entries with 2-week reminders for all my domains just in case so I can double-check that it has auto-renew enabled and if not then I can set it correctly or renew it manually right then and there.

We have to take responsibility with ownership of domains and ensure these things don't happen and there many ways to do that ourselves (two most common mentioned above). I don't believe Cloudron should be the vessel for that task personally, but hey if it's an easy add then totally cool to see.

[ruihildt]

@d19dotca Depending on countries, credit card can actually be pretty hard to obtain for a lot of people.

But I agree this is out of scope, unless there's an easy adn reliable way to figure it out.

[potemkin_ai]

@d19dotca I can work this around, trust me. But I used to let tools to assist me, especially, since there is a very easy way to do that - described above.

[colonelpanic]

If this is such a big issue and you can't pay attention to the emails from your registrar to renew your domain then transfer it to a registrar that will auto-renew the domain for you.