.TH "WHOIS" "1" "4 March 2005" "Marco d'Itri" "Debian GNU/Linux"
.SH "NAME"
whois \- client for the whois directory service
.SH "SYNOPSIS"
.B whois
[\~\fB\-h\fP\~\fIHOST\fP\~]
[\~\fB\-p\fP\~ \fIPORT\fP\~]
[\~\fB\-aCFHlLMmrRSVx\fP\~]
[\~\fB\-g\fP\~\fISOURCE:FIRST\-LAST\fP\~]
[\~\fB\-i\fP\~\fIATTR\fP\~]
[\~\fB\-S\fP\~\fISOURCE\fP\~]
[\~\fB\-T\fP\~\fITYPE\fP\~]
.I object

.B whois
[\~\fI\-t\fP\~]
[\~\fI\-v\fP\~]
.I template
.B whois
[\~\fI\-q\fP\~]
.I keyword
.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
Connect to HOST.
.TP 8
.B \-H
Do not display the legal disclaimers some registries like to show you.
.TP 8
.B \-p PORT
Connect to PORT.
.TP 8
.B \-\-verbose
Be verbose.
.TP 8
.B \-\-help
Display online help.
.TP 8
Other options are flags understood by RIPE-like servers.
.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.nic.mil\fP for AS numbers, the program will
automatically convert the request in the appropriate format, inserting
a space after the string \fIAS\fP.
.P
If the program is compiled with IDN support, when querying
\fIwhois.denic.de\fP for domain names it will automatically add the flags
\fI\-T dn,ace \-C US\-ASCII\fP if no flags have been specified by the user.
The domain name will \fBalways\fP be IDN-encoded.
.P
When querying \fIwhois.corenic.net\fP, the program will automatically
request machine-readable output.
.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 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.
.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 environment variable specifies a Japanese locale.
.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.
.IP "WHOIS_HIDE"
If this variable is defined, legal disclaimers will be hidden even if
the \fI\-H\fP flag is not used.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
\fIRFC 3912\fP: WHOIS Protocol Specification
.PP 
\fIRIPE\-223\fP: RIPE NCC Database Documentation
.PP 
Detailed help on available flags can be found in \fIRIPE\-223\fP or in
the help file which can be obtained with the command:
.IP 
.B whois \-h whois.ripe.net HELP
.SH "BUGS"
The program has many buffer overflows when parsing the command line
parameters: be sure to not pass untrusted data to it.
It will be rewritten to use a dynamic 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.