.TH jwhois 1 "November 2001" GNU
.SH NAME
jwhois \- client for the whois service
.SH SYNOPSIS
.ll +8
.B jwhois
.RB
[
.I "OPTIONS"
]...
[
.I "QUERY"
]
.ll -8
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I jwhois
searches Whois servers for the object on the command line.

The host to query is taken from a global configuration file,
a configuration file specified on the command line, or selected
directly on the command line.

.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.B \-\-version
display version, authors and licensing information.
.TP
.B \-\-help
display a short help text.
.TP
.B \-c FILE \-\-config=FILE
uses FILE as a configuration file instead of the default.
.TP
.B \-h HOST \-\-host=HOST
overrides any hosts in the configuration file and queries HOST directly.
.TP
.B \-p PORT \-\-port=PORT
specifies a port number to use when querying a HOST.
.TP
.B \-f \-\-force-lookup
forces a query to be made to a host even if a current object
is available from the cache.
.TP
.B \-v \-\-verbose
outputs verbose debugging information while running (use this before
sending a bugreport to ensure that it's indeed a bug and not a 
misconfiguration). You can increase the verbosity by giving several
verbose commands to jwhois, such as \-vv.
.TP
.B \-n \-\-no-redirect
disable features that redirect queries from one server to another.
.TP
.B \-s \-\-no-whoisservers
disable the built-in support for whois-servers.net.
.TP
.B \-a \-\-raw
send query verbatim to receiving hosts instead of rewriting them according
to the configuration.
.TP
.B \-i \-\-display\-redirections
display every step in a redirection (default is to display only the
last answer).
.TP
.B \-d \-\-disable\-cache
completely disable both reading and writing to cache.
.TP
.B \-r \-\-rwhois
force the query to use the rwhois protocol instead of HTTP or whois.
.TP
.B \-\-rwhois\-display=DISPLAY
asks receiving rwhois servers to display the results in the DISPLAY display
instead of the default dump display.
.TP
.B \-\-rwhois\-limit=LIMIT
asks receiving rwhois servers to limit their responses to LIMIT matches.

.SS "RIPE EXTENSIONS"
To use the options specified in
.IR "RIPE Document 157" ,
you need to change the format of the query slightly.
If you were to search for all entries in
the RIPE database which lists the
.IR admin-c ", " tech-c " or " zone-c " as " CO19-RIPE ,
you could use the following command syntax:

.B jwhois -h whois.ripe.net \-\- \-i admin-c,tech-c,zone-c CO19-RIPE

.B \-\-
is used to separate the RIPE options from the jwhois options.

.ll -8
.SH "SEE ALSO"
whois(1)