Ubuntu Manpage: whois - client for the whois directory service

NAME

       whois - client for the whois directory service

SYNOPSIS

       whois  [  {  -h  |  --host  }  HOST  ]  [  {  -p  |  --port } PORT ] [ -abBcdGHIKlLmMrRx ]
       [  -g  SOURCE:FIRST-LAST  ]  [  -i  ATTR[,ATTR]...  ]  [  -s  SOURCE[,SOURCE]...  ]  [  -T
       TYPE[,TYPE]... ] [ --verbose ] [ --no-recursion ] 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 that some registries like to show you.

-p PORT,
--port=PORT Connect to PORT.

-I First query whois.iana.org and then follow its referral to the whois server
authoritative for that request. This works for IP addresses, AS numbers and
domains. BEWARE: this implies that the IANA server will receive your complete
query.

--no-recursion
Disable recursion from registry to registrar servers.

--verbose
Be verbose.

--help Display online help.

--version
Display the program version.

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 objects 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 is useful to obtain Near Real Time Mirroring stream.

-G Disable grouping of associated objects.

-i ATTR[,ATTR]...
Inverse-search objects having associated attributes. ATTR is the attribute name,
while the positional OBJECT argument is the attribute value.

-K Return primary key attributes only. An exception is the members attribute of set
objects, which is always returned. Another exception are all attributes of the
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 information about the server. KEYWORD can be version for the server
version, sources for the list of database sources or types for the list of
supported object types.

-r Disable recursive lookups 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 SOURCE. Sources are
delimited by comma, and the order is significant. Use the -q sources parameter to
obtain a 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

When querying the Verisign gTLDs (e.g. .com, .net...) thin registry servers for a domain,
the program will automatically prepend the domain keyword to only show domain records.
The nameserver or registrar keywords must be used to show other kinds of records.

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 using non-standard query parameters
then the command line options which are not to be interpreted by the client must 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.

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.

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 later.