.br domains lookup not working due to WHMCS using incorrect hostname

[Kuhl, Rubens]

WHMCS comes with whois.dist.json pointing whois.nic.br for .br domain lookups. While this also worked for some years, the official WHOIS service (as can be seen in https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/br.html) has always been whois.registro.br. An architecture change removed whois.nic.br from the DNS, which has been causing availability check errors in WHMCS installations. 

While a new DNS entry has been added to make whois.nic.br resolve again, now as a CNAME, it might take some time for some resolvers to catch up. And either way, this was a WHMCS error that WHMCS needs to fix. 

For now, either try refreshing resolver cache for whois.nic.br, or add a whois.json to point .br either to whois.registro.br, or to a simplified availability check:

{
	"extensions": ".com.br,.net.br,.eco.br,.art.br,.adv.br,.eng.br",
	"uri": "https://registro.br/v2/ajax/avail/raw/",
	"available": "\"status\":0"
	}

Note that this URL for ajax avail is subject to change without notice, since it's used in the registro.br front-end. socket://whois.registro.br is still the official source for WHOIS data, although subject to query limits. 

 

 

 

[RadWebHosting]

7 hours ago, Kuhl, Rubens said:

the official WHOIS service (as can be seen in https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/br.html) has always been whois.registro.br

7 hours ago, Kuhl, Rubens said:

While a new DNS entry has been added to make whois.nic.br resolve again, now as a CNAME, it might take some time for some resolvers to catch up. And either way, this was a WHMCS error that WHMCS needs to fix. 

For now, either try refreshing resolver cache for whois.nic.br, or add a whois.json to point .br either to whois.registro.br, or to a simplified availability check:

{
	"extensions": ".com.br,.net.br,.eco.br,.art.br,.adv.br,.eng.br",
	"uri": "https://registro.br/v2/ajax/avail/raw/",
	"available": "\"status\":0"
	}

Note that this URL for ajax avail is subject to change without notice, since it's used in the registro.br front-end. socket://whois.registro.br is still the official source for WHOIS data, although subject to query limits. 

Wouldn't it make more sense to overwrite the .br WHOIS lookups, given the information provided?

Seems like the best long-term, stable solution would be to query the official server (using socket://whois.registro.br), by adding to the whois.json

[Kuhl, Rubens]

On 1/15/2025 at 9:00 PM, RadWebHosting said:

Wouldn't it make more sense to overwrite the .br WHOIS lookups, given the information provided?

Seems like the best long-term, stable solution would be to query the official server (using socket://whois.registro.br), by adding to the whois.json

WHOIS for .br is strongly rate limited so not using WHOIS will go around that... but for the official dist.whois.json I would only suggest WHMCS to use socket://whois.registro.br. 
But for specific installations, the workaround of using the availability query might be better suited. Notably for installations not using captcha at the availability page. 

That said, it would probably be interesting if WHMCS moved to split availability queries from WHOIS queries when someone actually is interested in registration data. The later is much less usual and probably wouldn't trigger rate limits much.