whois.1

.TH "WHOIS" "1" "20 December 2009" "Marco d'Itri" "Debian GNU/Linux"
.SH "NAME"
whois \- client for the whois directory service
.SH "SYNOPSIS"
.B whois
[\~{\~\fB\-h\fP | \fB\-\-host\fP\~}\~\fIHOST\fP\~]
[\~{\~\fB\-p\fP | \fB\-\-port\fP\~}\~\fIPORT\fP\~]
[\~\fB\-abBcdGHKlLmMrRx\fP\~]
[\~\fB\-g\fP\~\fISOURCE:FIRST\-LAST\fP\~]
[\~\fB\-i\fP\~\fIATTR\fP[\fI,ATTR\fP]...\~]
[\~\fB\-s\fP\~\fISOURCE\fP[\fI,SOURCE\fP]...\~]
[\~\fB\-T\fP\~\fITYPE\fP[\fI,TYPE\fP]...\~]
[\~\fB\-\-verbose\fP\~]
.I OBJECT

.B whois
.B \-q
.I KEYWORD

.B whois
.B \-t
.I TYPE

.B whois
.B \-v
.I TYPE

.B whois
.B \-\-help

.B whois
.B \-\-version

.PP
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
\fBwhois\fP searches for an object in a \fIRFC\ 3912\fP 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 \fIwhois.networksolutions.com\fP for NIC handles or \fIwhois.arin.net\fP
for IPv4 addresses and network names.
.PP
.SH "OPTIONS"
.TP 8
.B \-h HOST, \-\-host HOST
Connect to HOST.
.TP 8
.B \-H
Do not display the legal disclaimers some registries like to show you.
.TP 8
.B \-p, \-\-port PORT
Connect to PORT.
.TP 8
.B \-\-verbose
Be verbose.
.TP 8
.B \-\-help
Display online help.
.TP 8
.B \-\-version
Display client version information.
.P
Other options are flags understood by \fIwhois.ripe.net\fP and some other
RIPE-like servers:
.TP 8
.B \-a
Also search all the mirrored databases.
.TP 8
.B \-b
Return brief IP address ranges with abuse contact.
.TP 8
.B \-B
Disable object filtering. (Show the e-mail addresses.)
.TP 8
.B \-c
Return the smallest IP address range with a reference to an irt object.
.TP 8
.B \-d
Return the reverse DNS delegation object too.
.\" .TP 8
.\" .B \-F
.\" Return attribute names in short format. Implies \fI-r\fP option.
.TP 8
.B \-g SOURCE:FIRST\-LAST
Search updates from \fISOURCE\fP database between \fIFIRST\fP and \fILAST\fP
update serial number. It's useful to obtain Near Real Time Mirroring stream.
.TP 8
.B \-G
Disable grouping of associated objects.
.TP 8
.B \-i ATTR[,ATTR]...
Search objects having associated attributes. \fIATTR\fP is attribute name.
Attribute value is positional \fIOBJECT\fP argument.
.TP 8
.B \-K
Return primary key attributes only. Exception is \fImembers\fP attribute of
\fIset\fP object which is always returned. Another exceptions are all
attributes of objects \fIorganisation\fP, \fIperson\fP, and \fIrole\fP that
are never returned.
.TP 8
.B \-l
Return the one level less specific object.
.TP 8
.B \-L
Return all levels of less specific objects.
.TP 8
.B \-m
Return all one level more specific objects.
.TP 8
.B \-M
Return all levels of more specific objects.
.TP 8
.B -q KEYWORD
Return list of keywords supported by server. \fIKEYWORD\fP can be
\fIversion\fP for server version, \fIsources\fP for list of source databases,
or \fItypes\fP for object types.
.TP 8
.B \-r
Disable recursive look-up for contact information.
.TP 8
.B \-R
Disable following referrals and force showing the object from the local copy
in the server.
.TP 8
.B \-s SOURCE[,SOURCE]...
Request the server to search for objects mirrored from \fISOURCES\fP.
Sources are delimited by comma and the order is significant.
Use \fI-q sources\fP option to obtain list of valid sources.
.TP 8
.B \-t TYPE
Return the template for a object of \fITYPE\fP.
.TP 8
.B \-T TYPE[,TYPE]...
Restrict the search to objects of \fITYPE\fP. Multiple types are separated by
a comma.
.TP 8
.B -v TYPE
Return the verbose template for a object of \fITYPE\fP.
.\" .TP 8
.\" .B \-V AGENT
.\" Change user agent identifier. Typical format is \fIXXn.n\fP like \fIMd5.0\fP.
.\" RIPE uses the value to identify a client behind a registered proxy (in that
.\" case a comma followed by a client IP address should be appended).
.TP 8
.B -x
Search for only exact match on network address prefix.
.SH "NOTES"
Please remember that \fIwhois.networksolutions.com\fP by default will
only search in the domains database. If you want to search for NIC handles
you have to prepend a \fI!\fP character. When you do this, the default
server becomes \fIwhois.networksolutions.com\fP.
.P
When querying \fIwhois.arin.net\fP for IPv4 or IPv6 networks, the CIDR
netmask length will be automatically removed from the query string.
.P
When querying \fIwhois.nic.ad.jp\fP for AS numbers, the program will
automatically convert the request in the appropriate format, inserting
a space after the string \fIAS\fP.
.P
When querying \fIwhois.denic.de\fP for domain names and no other
flags have been specified, the program will automatically add the flag
\fI\-T dn\fP.
.P
When querying \fIwhois.dk-hostmaster.dk\fP for domain names and no other
flags have been specified, the program will automatically add the flag
\fI\-\-show\-handles\fP.
.P
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 \fI\-\-\fP
separator (which marks the beginning of the query string).
.P
If the \fI/etc/whois.conf\fR 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.
.P
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.
.P
Command line arguments will always be interpreted accordingly to the
current system locale and converted to the IDN ASCII Compatible Encoding.
.SH "FILES"
/etc/whois.conf
.SH "ENVIRONMENT"
.IP LANG
When querying \fIwhois.nic.ad.jp\fP and \fIwhois.jprs.jp\fP English text
is requested unless the \fILANG\fP or \fILC_MESSAGES\fP environment
variables specify a Japanese locale.
.IP "WHOIS_OPTIONS"
A list of options which will be evaluated before the ones specified on the
command line.
.IP "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
\fIwhois.arin.net\fP will be queried.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
\fBwhois.conf\fP(5)
.PP
\fIRFC 3912\fP: WHOIS Protocol Specification
.PP
\fIRIPE Database Query Reference Manual:\fP
\fI<http://www.ripe.net/data-tools/support/documentation/ripe-database-query-reference-manual>\fP
.SH "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.
.SH "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.
.SH "AUTHOR"
.B Whois
and this man page were written by Marco d'Itri <\fImd@linux.it\fP>
and are licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License,
version 2 or higher.