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NAME

       whois - client for the whois directory service

SYNOPSIS

       whois   [   -h   HOST   ]   [   -p      PORT   ]   [  -aCFHlLMmrRSVx  ]
       [ -g SOURCE:FIRST-LAST ] [ -i ATTR ] [ -S SOURCE ] [ -T TYPE ] object

       whois [ -t ] [ -v ] template whois [ -q ] keyword

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 Connect to HOST.

       -H      Do  not  display  the legal disclaimers some registries like to
               show you.

       -p PORT Connect to PORT.

       --verbose
               Be verbose.

       --help  Display online help.

       Other options are flags understood by RIPE-like servers.

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 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.

       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  evalued  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

       RIPE-223: RIPE NCC Database Documentation

       Detailed  help  on  available  flags can be found in RIPE-223 or in the
       help file which can be obtained with the command:

              whois -h whois.ripe.net HELP

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.