WHOIS(1) | General Commands Manual | WHOIS(1) |
whois
— Internet
domain name and network number directory service
whois |
[-AadgIilmPQRr ] [-c
country-code | -h
host] [-p
port] name ... |
The whois
utility looks up records in the
databases maintained by several Network Information Centers (NICs).
The options are as follows:
-A
-a
(Hint: All point of contact handles in the ARIN whois database
end with "-ARIN
".)
-c
country-code-h
option with
an argument of
"country-code.whois-servers.net
".-d
-g
-h
hostBy default whois
constructs the name
of a whois server to use from the top-level domain (TLD) of the supplied
(single) argument. For newer generic domains (gTLDs), a lookup for
whois.nic.tld is attempted. For other TLDs, or if this lookup fails,
".whois-servers.net
" is appended to
the TLD. This effectively allows a suitable whois server to be selected
automatically for a large number of TLDs.
In the event that an IP address is specified, the whois server
will default to the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). If a
query to ARIN references APNIC, LACNIC, or RIPE, that server will be
queried also, provided that the -Q
option is not
specified.
If the query is not a domain name or IP address,
whois
will fall back to
whois.crsnic.net.
-I
-i
(Hint: Contact information, identified by the term
handle, can be
looked up by prefixing "!
" or
"handle
" to the NIC handle in
the query.)
-l
-m
-P
-p
portwhois
defaults to the
“whois” port listed in /etc/services
(port 43).-Q
whois
will not
attempt to lookup the name in the authoritative whois server (if one is
listed) nor will it contact InterNic if a lookup fails. This flag has no
effect when combined with any other flag.-R
-c
option with an
argument of "RU
" instead.-r
The default action, unless directed otherwise with a special name, is to do a very broad search, looking for matches to name in all types of records and most fields (name, nicknames, hostname, net address, etc.) in the database. For more information as to what name operands have special meaning, and how to guide the search, use the special name “help”.
Queries beginning with an exclamation point
‘!
’ are assumed to be NSI contact
handles. Unless a host or domain is specified on the command line,
(whois.networksolutions.com) will be used as the
whois
database.
Similarly, queries beginning with “COCO-” are
assumed to be CORE contact handles. Unless a host or domain is specified on
the command line, (whois.corenic.net) will be used as the
whois
database.
Most types of data, such as domain names and IP addresses, can be
used as arguments to whois
without any options, and
whois
will choose the correct whois server to query.
Some exceptions, where whois
will not be able to
handle data correctly, are detailed below.
To obtain contact information about an administrator located in
the Russian TLD domain "RU
", use the
-c
option as shown in the following example, where
CONTACT-ID is substituted with the actual contact
identifier.
whois -c RU CONTACT-ID
(Note: This example is specific to the TLD
"RU
", but other TLDs can be queried by
using a similar syntax.)
The following example demonstrates how to query a whois server
using a non-standard port, where
“query-data
” is the query to be sent
to “whois.example.com
” on port
“rwhois
” (written numerically as
4321).
whois -h whois.example.com -p rwhois
query-data
K. Harrenstien, M. Stahl, and E. Feinler, NICNAME/WHOIS, RFC 954, October 1985.
L. Daigle, WHOIS Protocol Specification, RFC 3912, September 2004.
The whois
command appeared in
4.3BSD.
February 18, 2022 | OpenBSD-current |