I had a request to track when a leased domain was expiring after we were finished using it.  Instead of manually giving status twice a day I decided to create a script to do the work for me.  The script is pretty well documented already, but the basic process is checking DOMAIN1.COM in a WHOIS search and analyzing the results.  If the DNS names servers point back to DOMAIN2.COM, I know that the domain is still registered to us and is still alive.  To check the WHOIS results, I am running a grep for DOMAIN2.COM, and if found the built-in command success/error shows a “0″.  If the results do not include DOMAIN2.COM, the command with error with a “1″.  Based on the error code value, I send an email telling if the domain is UP or DOWN. Read the rest of this entry »