NAME¶
whois - client for the whois directory service
SYNOPSIS¶
whois [ {
-h |
--host }
HOST ] [ {
-p |
--port }
PORT ] [
-abBcdGHKlLmMrRx ] [
-g SOURCE:FIRST-LAST ] [
-i ATTR[
,ATTR]... ] [
-s SOURCE[
,SOURCE]... ] [
-T TYPE[
,TYPE]... ] [
--verbose ]
OBJECT
whois -q KEYWORD
whois -t TYPE
whois -v TYPE
whois --help
whois --version
DESCRIPTION¶
whois searches for an object in a
RFC 3912 database.
This version of the whois client tries to guess the right server to ask for the
specified object. If no guess can be made it will connect to
whois.networksolutions.com for NIC handles or
whois.arin.net for
IPv4 addresses and network names.
OPTIONS¶
- -h HOST, --host HOST
- Connect to HOST.
- -H
- Do not display the legal disclaimers some registries like to show
you.
- -p, --port PORT
- Connect to PORT.
- --verbose
- Be verbose.
- --help
- Display online help.
- --version
- Display client version information.
Other options are flags understood by
whois.ripe.net and some other
RIPE-like servers:
- -a
- Also search all the mirrored databases.
- -b
- Return brief IP address ranges with abuse contact.
- -B
- Disable object filtering. (Show the e-mail addresses.)
- -c
- Return the smallest IP address range with a reference to an irt
object.
- -d
- Return the reverse DNS delegation object too.
- -g SOURCE:FIRST-LAST
- Search updates from SOURCE database between FIRST and
LAST update serial number. It's useful to obtain Near Real Time
Mirroring stream.
- -G
- Disable grouping of associated objects.
- -i ATTR[,ATTR]...
- Search objects having associated attributes. ATTR is attribute
name. Attribute value is positional OBJECT argument.
- -K
- Return primary key attributes only. Exception is members attribute
of set object which is always returned. Another exceptions are all
attributes of objects organisation, person, and role
that are never returned.
- -l
- Return the one level less specific object.
- -L
- Return all levels of less specific objects.
- -m
- Return all one level more specific objects.
- -M
- Return all levels of more specific objects.
- -q KEYWORD
- Return list of keywords supported by server. KEYWORD can be
version for server version, sources for list of source
databases, or types for object types.
- -r
- Disable recursive look-up for contact information.
- -R
- Disable following referrals and force showing the object from the local
copy in the server.
- -s SOURCE[,SOURCE]...
- Request the server to search for objects mirrored from SOURCES.
Sources are delimited by comma and the order is significant. Use -q
sources option to obtain list of valid sources.
- -t TYPE
- Return the template for a object of TYPE.
- -T TYPE[,TYPE]...
- Restrict the search to objects of TYPE. Multiple types are
separated by a comma.
- -v TYPE
- Return the verbose template for a object of TYPE.
- -x
- Search for only exact match on network address prefix.
NOTES¶
Please remember that
whois.networksolutions.com by default will only
search in the domains database. If you want to search for NIC handles you have
to prepend a
! character. When you do this, the default server becomes
whois.networksolutions.com.
When querying
whois.arin.net for IPv4 or IPv6 networks, the CIDR netmask
length will be automatically removed from the query string.
When querying
whois.nic.ad.jp for AS numbers, the program will
automatically convert the request in the appropriate format, inserting a space
after the string
AS.
When querying
whois.denic.de for domain names and no other flags have
been specified, the program will automatically add the flag
-T dn.
When querying
whois.dk-hostmaster.dk for domain names and no other flags
have been specified, the program will automatically add the flag
--show-handles.
RIPE-specific command line options are ignored when querying non-RIPE servers.
This may or may not be the behaviour intended by the user. When querying a
non-standard server, command line options which are not to be interpreted by
the client should always follow the
-- separator (which marks the
beginning of the query string).
If the
/etc/whois.conf configuration file exists, it will be consulted to
find a server before applying the normal rules. Each line of the file should
contain a regular expression to be matched against the query text and the
whois server to use, separated by white space. IDN domains must use the ACE
format.
The whois protocol does not specify an encoding for characters which cannot be
represented by ASCII and implementations vary wildly. If the program knows
that a specific server uses a certain encoding, if needed it will transcode
the server output to the encoding specified by the current system locale.
Command line arguments will always be interpreted accordingly to the current
system locale and converted to the IDN ASCII Compatible Encoding.
FILES¶
/etc/whois.conf
ENVIRONMENT¶
- LANG
- When querying whois.nic.ad.jp and whois.jprs.jp English text
is requested unless the LANG or LC_MESSAGES environment
variables specify a Japanese locale.
- WHOIS_OPTIONS
- A list of options which will be evaluated before the ones specified on the
command line.
- WHOIS_SERVER
- This server will be queried if the program cannot guess where some kind of
objects are located. If the variable does not exist then
whois.arin.net will be queried.
SEE ALSO¶
whois.conf(5)
RFC 3912: WHOIS Protocol Specification
RIPE Database Query Reference Manual:
<http://www.ripe.net/data-tools/support/documentation/ripe-database-query-reference-manual>
BUGS¶
The program may have buffer overflows in the command line parser: be sure to not
pass untrusted data to it. It should be rewritten to use a dynamics strings
library.
HISTORY¶
This program closely tracks the user interface of the whois client developed at
RIPE by Ambrose Magee and others on the base of the original BSD client. I
also added support for the protocol extensions developed by David Kessens of
QWest for the 6bone server.
AUTHOR¶
Whois and this man page were written by Marco d'Itri <
md@linux.it> and are licensed under the terms of the GNU General
Public License, version 2 or higher.