DESCRIPTION¶
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¶
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¶
RFC 3912: WHOIS Protocol Specification
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 dynamic 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.
| Source file: | whois.1.en.gz (from whois 5.2.17~deb9u1) |
| Source last updated: | 2017-07-27T15:45:04Z |
| Converted to HTML: | 2019-06-12T15:48:27Z |
Linux whois command
On Unix-like operating systems, the whois command is a client for the WHOIS directory service.
Description
whois searches for an object in a WHOIS database. WHOIS is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users of an Internet resource, such as a domain name or an IP address block, but is also used for a wider range of other information.
Most modern versions of whois try to guess the right server to ask for the specified object. If no guess can be made, whois will connect to whois.networksolutions.com for NIC handles or whois.arin.net for IPv4 addresses and network names.
Syntax
whois [ -h HOST ] [ -p PORT ] [ -aCFHlLMmrRSVx ] [ -g SOURCE:FIRST-LAST ] [ -i ATTR ] [ -S SOURCE ] [ -T TYPE ] object
Options
| -h HOST | Connect to WHOIS database host HOST. |
| -H | Suppress the display of legal disclaimers. |
| -p PORT | When connecting, connect to network port PORT. |
| —verbose | Operate verbosely. |
| —help | Display a help message, and exit. |
History
When the Internet was first emerging from the primordial ooze of the ARPANET, there was only one organization that handled all domain registrations: DARPA. WHOIS was developed (and standardized in the early ’80s) to look up domains, people and other resources related to domain and number registrations. Because all registration was done by one organization at that time, there was one centralized server for all WHOIS queries. This made looking up WHOIS information very easy.
The first WHOIS servers were highly permissive and would allow wildcard searches. A WHOIS query of a person’s last name would yield all individuals with that name; a query with given keyword returned all registered domains containing that keyword. A query for given administrative contact returned all domains associated with the administrator. Since the advent of the commercialized Internet, multiple registrars, and spammers, such permissive searching is no longer available.
Responsibility of domain registration remained with DARPA as the ARPANET became the Internet during the 1980s. Then the National Science Foundation directed that management of Internet domain registration would be handled by commercial, third-party entities. InterNIC was formed in 1993 under contract with the NSF, consisting of Network Solutions, Inc., General Atomics and AT&T. In 1999, management of the TLD .com, .net, and .org was assigned to ICANN.
By 2005, there were many more generic top-level domains than there had been in the early 1980s, and many more country-code top-level domains. This led to a complex network of domain name registrars and registrar associations, especially as the management of Internet infrastructure became more internationalized. As a result, performing a WHOIS query on a domain now requires knowing the correct, authoritative WHOIS server to use, and tools to do WHOIS proxy searches have become common.
In 2004, an IETF committee was formed to create a new standard for looking up information on domain names and network numbers. The current working name for this proposed new standard is Cross Registry Information Service Protocol, or CRISP. It is intended to someday replace WHOIS, but is currently still in development.
Technical notes
Please remember that whois.networksolutions.com by default only searches in the domains database. 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 automatically converts 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 are specified, the program automatically adds the flag -T dn.
When querying whois.dk-hostmaster.dk for domain names and no other flags are specified, the program automatically adds the flag —show-handles.
If the /etc/whois.conf config 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 (ASCII Compatible Encoding) 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 are always be interpreted accordingly to the current system locale and converted to the IDN ASCII Compatible Encoding.
Configuration
The whois configuration file is located at /etc/whois.conf by default.
Environment
The following environment variables affect the operation of whois:
| 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. |
Examples
Performs a whois query for the domain name computerhope.com.
Related commands
who — Report which users are logged in to the system.