Provided by:
whois_5.2.13_amd64 
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.