Pierre-Olivier Mercier
5ccdd8892f
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Add individual reference pages for all domain health checkers (EN/FR), update the homepage feature descriptions in both languages to highlight monitoring, notifications, and domain availability checks.
38 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
38 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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date: 2026-06-11T09:00:00+02:00
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author: nemunaire
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title: External-reference expiry
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description: "Retrieves the WHOIS/RDAP registration facts for the external domains your zone points to, so their expiry can be evaluated."
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weight: 50
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---
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The **External-reference expiry** checker looks up the registration facts of the *external* domains your zone refers to. When a record points at a name you do not own (a `CNAME` to a third-party service, an `MX` to an external provider, an `NS` delegation…), the safety of your zone depends on that external domain staying registered. If it expires and is re-registered by someone else, the pointer can be hijacked.
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This is a **zone-level** checker: it enumerates the external targets discovered in the zone and performs one WHOIS/RDAP lookup per distinct registrable domain. Targets sharing the same registrable domain reuse a single lookup, and lookups run with a bounded concurrency so a large zone does not overwhelm the registry.
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## What it checks
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This checker is primarily a **collector**. It gathers per-target WHOIS facts (registrable name, expiry date, creation date, registrar, status) and publishes them for the *dangling-reference* checker, which is where the actionable verdicts about expiration, redemption or recent re-registration are emitted.
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Its own rule, `external_whois_collected`, reports only how the collection went:
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| Status | Condition |
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|--------|-----------|
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| **OK** | WHOIS was collected for every external target |
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| **Info** | Some lookups succeeded and some failed (a partial result), or no external target was reported at all |
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| **Warning** | The WHOIS lookup failed for *all* external targets |
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| **Error** | The external WHOIS observation could not be read |
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{{% notice style="info" title="Verdicts live in the dangling-reference checker" %}}
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This checker does not decide whether an external domain is dangerously close to expiry. It only retrieves the facts. The expiry, redemption and re-registration verdicts are surfaced by the companion dangling-reference checker, which consumes the facts collected here.
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{{% /notice %}}
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## Options
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This checker has no user-tunable options. The list of external targets is supplied automatically from the zone's discovered references.
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## In happyDomain
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Enable this checker from the zone's **Checks** view; see {{< relref "/pages/checks" >}} for how to configure and schedule checks. The discovery of external targets is automatic.
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For the registration of the domains you own directly, see {{< relref "/reference/checkers/domain-expiry" >}}.
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