This file documents JWHOIS, a Whois client.

Copyright (C) 1999-2005  Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

This file documents the GNU jwhois package, en extended Whois client. This is edition 3.2.1, for jwhois version 3.2.3, last updated 30 June 2002.

Introduction
************

JWHOIS is an Internet Whois client that contains an extensible configuration file which defines its operation. The client supports queries to foreign hosts either through the RFC 954 - NICNAME/WHOIS protocol, the RFC 2167 - Referral Whois 1.5 protocol, or HTTP using an external browser.

Upon execution, JWHOIS searches through the its configuration to find the most specific whois server to query. Depending upon the reply from that whois server, JWHOIS can assume the query was successfull and display the result to the user, or optionally redirect the query to another server to find more specific information.

Invocation
**********

JWHOIS uses the following command-line options:

--version
     Print the program version and licensing information.

--help
     Print a usage message summarizing the command-line options.

-c FILE

--config=FILE
     Reads configuration from FILE instead of from the default system global configuration file.

-h HOST

--host=HOST
     Overrides any specifications in the configuration file and queries HOST directly.

-p PORT

--port=PORT
     Specifies a port number to use when querying a HOST

-f

--force-lookup
     Forces a query to be made to a host even if a current object is available from the cache.

-v

--verbose
     Outputs verbose debugging information while running (use this before sending a bugreport to ensure that it's indeed a bug and not a misconfiguration). You can increase the verbosity by giving several verbose commands to jwhois, such as -vv.

-n

--no-redirect
     Disable features that redirect queries from one server to another.

-s

--no-whoisservers
     Disable the built-in support for whois-servers.net.

-a

--raw
     Send query verbatim to receiving hosts instead of rewriting them according to the configuration.

-i

--display-redirections
     Display every step in a redirection (default is to display only the last answer).

-d

--disable-cache
     Completely disable both reading and writing to cache

-r

--rwhois
     Force the query to use the rwhois protocoll instead of HTTP or whois.

--rwhois-display=DISPLAY
     Asks receiving rwhois servers to display the results in the DISPLAY display instead of the default dump display.

--rwhois-limit=LIMIT
     asks receiving rwhois servers to limit their responses to LIMIT matches.

The query can optionally contain the character @ followed by a host name to direct the search to that host. This works exactly like specifying the host with --host or -h.

Site Configuration
******************

JWHOIS is configurable via its configuration file, normally called jwhois.conf. This file is looked for in the sysconfdir that was specified when compiling the program (default is /usr/local/etc/ on most systems).

If no configuration file can be found, JWHOIS will default all queries to whois.internic.net.

An example configuration file that includes most known Whois servers can be found in the example subdirectory of the official distribution. This example configuration also contains a lot of well used options that should be suitable for most setups.

The configuration file is split into a number of blocks. Each block can contain a number of different options which are explained in the sections below. You can also get an overview of the syntax by looking at the example configuration file included in the distribution.

Global options
**************

The global options of JWHOIS configure some basic facilities that are to be used for all hosts and queries made.

cachefile
     By default, the location of the cache file is /usr/local/var/jwhois.db, but this can be changed at compile time. The option cachefile also changes the location.

cacheexpire
     The default expire time for all cached objects it 7 days (168 hours). this can be changed with the cacheexpire option. The value is the number of hours that objects is considered to be current.

whois-servers-domain
     Whois-servers.net is a service offered by the CenterGate Research Group. They register CNAMEs in the whois-servers.net domain for every known top-level domain, pointing to the appropriate whois server.

     When querying for wildebeest.se for example, JWHOIS would look for an address se.whois-servers.net and query the appropriate server based on that information.

     If you wish to make whois-servers.net-style queries using another domain name than whois-servers.net, you can change this option to the domain name you want.

browser-pathname

browser-stdarg

browser-postarg

post-as-file
     These options control the HTTP support on JWHOIS. browser-pathname should be set to the path and executable of the browser you wish to use to download information from HTTP-gateways. This is normally a program such as LYNX or CURL.

     browser-stdarg sets the arguments to pass to the browser in order to have the browser direct its options to the standard output. JWHOIS catches this information and displays it to the user.

     browser-postarg sets the arguments used to enable a processing of POST requests.

     post-as-file selects the way POST data is sent to the browser. If set to TRUE, LYNX-style processing is enabled, which means that the program, when passed the option specified in browser-postarg, should accept one variable per line of input on standard input, terminated with three dashes. If set to FALSE, W3M-style processing is enabled, which means that the program, when passed this option, should consider the parameter that follows the one specified in browser-postarg as a file name from which to read POST data.

Examples:

     cachefile = "/var/lib/jwhois.db";
     cacheexpire = 168;
     browser-pathname = "/usr/bin/lynx";
     browser-stdarg = "-dump";
     browser-postarg = "-post_data";

Whois servers
*************

When making a query, JWHOIS looks at the whois-servers block to determine which host to send the query to. This block consists of a number of rules. Each rule is evaluated in turn, starting with the first one in whois-servers. A rule consists of a key and a value. The key can be either a special option, or a CIDR block or regular expression that is matched against the query that the user specified.

The special option type takes one value, either cidr or regex. This defines the current blocks matching. Each block can match either with CIDR blocks or regular expressions, never both.

If the key is a regular expression, the value can take on of two forms. Either a single string containing the hostname of the appropriate whois-server, optionally postfixed with a colon and a port number, or a block.

If the value of the regular expression is a block, it can contain any number of options. The options whois-server and query-format are supported today.

whois-server specifies the hostname of the whois server to send a query to, optionally postfixed with a colon and a port number, just as if the value had been a single string containing the whois server hostname.

query-format rewrites queries matching this rule according to the contents of the options value. The special characters $* are replaced with the original query. If a query-format is specified both on an individual rule and on a server option, the most query-format for the individual rule will be used since it is most specific.

The special keyword default can be used to mark an entry as valid for all keys. The most specific rule will be used when searching for a host to query.

Examples:

     whois-servers {
             type = regex;

     	"\\([0-9]+\\.\\)+[0-9]+" = "struct cidr-blocks";
             ".*-[A-Z]+$" = "struct handles";

             default = "whois.internic.net";
     };
     handles {
             type = regex;

             ".*-RIPE$" = "whois.ripe.net";
     };

     cidr {
             type = cidr;

             "61.0.0.0/8" {
                     whois-server = "whois.apnic.net";
                     query-format = "$* /e";
             }
             default = "whois.arin.net";
     };

Server options
**************

The server-options block defines a number of parameters that are specific to each host.

whois-redirect
     This option, previously located in a separate content-redirect block of the configuration file, matches output from standard whois servers and redirects the query to another host based on the output.

     The most commonly used option here is to redirect the query from the Internic shared whois server to the whois server of each individual registrar.

     The value of the key whois-redirect should contain a regular expression which matches one or two string. If it matches one string, it will be treated as the hostname of a server to ask for more information. If it matches two strings, the first string will be treated as the hostname and the second as the port number.

     The matching follows standard regular expressions and grouping of regular expressions into one string is done by enclosing the group in parentheses.

query-format
     By specifying a query-format, the query can be rewritten before being sent to the target whois server. This is useful for example if the server defaults to output its information in another language than English, and you wish to always rewrite queries sent to it according to some syntax that enables output in English.

     The value of this option is a simple string where the special characters $* will be replaced with the original query. If a query-format is specified both on an individual rule and on a server option, the query-format for the individual rule will be used since it is most specific.

     For more advanced query rewrites, it is also possible to access subfields of the domain query. These subfields are counted from the left or the right, starting at 1 (one). To select the fields, the syntax ${start-end} (left to right) or ${start+end} (right to left). Either of the start or end fields can be omitted, and the two formats cannot be combined in one query. You can also select a single field (counting from the left) by using the format ${fieldnumber}. To do this when counting from the right, you need to write ${fieldnumber+fieldnumber}. Please note that the first field number is always the leftmost field, so the numerical values are swapped when counting right to left.

     To include a verbatim $ in the query, write $$.

     You can use query-format also for HTTP based queries, but it cannot be combined with http-action, form-element or form-extra.

http
     The http option specifies that this server supports queries made via HTTP. The value should be set to true if this is the case. The options http-method, http-action and form-element must also be set for this to work.

http-method
     When asking servers for information through HTTP, this option specifies the HTTP method to use. It can be either GET or POST. Many servers support either method, so selecting one is a matter of personal preference.

http-action
     This option specifies the action of the HTTP query sent to a remote host. Most often, this is simply the pathname of the URL.

form-element
     The form-element is the name of the HTML form element which should contain the query. Usually this is something simple, like domain, but you need to verify this by looking at each servers HTML documents before setting this option to its correct value.

form-extra
     Lists any extra form elements that are to be submitted with the query.

rwhois
     Set this option to true if the server supports the rwhois protocol, this option makes JWHOIS send all queries to the server as rwhois queries.

rwhois-display
     If the server supports rwhois and you wish to select another display than the default dump format, you can set this option to the display you wish to use.

rwhois-limit
     If the server supports rwhois and you wish to limit the amount of responses to a query, you can set this option to the number of responses you would like to receive at maximum.

Examples:

     server-options {
     	"rwhois\\.nic\\.ve" {
     		rwhois = true;
     		rwhois-display = "dump";
     		rwhois-limit = 10;
     	}
     	"whois\\.crsnic\\.net" {
     		whois-redirect = ".*Whois Server: \\(.*\\)";
     	}
     	"whois\\.ncst\\.ernet\\.in" {
     		query-format = "domain $*";
     	}
     	"www\\.nic-se\\.se" {
     		http = true;
     		http-method = "GET";
     		http-action = "/cgi-bin/whois/www-to-whois";
     		form-element = "domain";
     	}
     }

RIPE Extensions
***************

RIPE (Réseaux IP Européens) has defined a number of options that can be used against a RIPE-compatible whois server (ripe.net, apnic.net and others).  Unfortunately, there is really no way of telling whether a host we are connecting to is RIPE-compatible or not.  RIPE extensions are therefore not directly incorporated into the JWHOIS client. A list of the options can be found in RIPE Document 157 which you can get from the RIPE ftp server, ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/docs/.

It is possible to use these options together with JWHOIS by changing the format of the query slightly. If you were to search for all entries in the RIPE database which lists the admin-c, tech-c or zone-c as CO19-RIPE, you could use the following command syntax:

     $ jwhois -h whois.ripe.net -- -i admin-c,tech-c,zone-c CO19-RIPE

-- is used to separate the RIPE options from the jwhois options.

Reporting bugs
**************

Email bug reports to bug-jwhois@gnu.org.