WHOIS(1) FreeBSD General Commands Manual WHOIS(1)
NAME
whois - Internet domain name and network number directory service
SYNOPSIS
whois [-aAbfgiIklmPQrRS] [-c TLD | -h host] [-p port] [--] name ...
DESCRIPTION
The whois utility looks up records in the databases maintained by several
Network Information Centers (NICs).
By default whois starts by querying the Internet Assigned Numbers
Authority (IANA) whois server, and follows referrals to whois servers
that have more specific details about the query name. The IANA whois
server knows about IP address and AS numbers as well as domain names.
There are a few special cases where referrals do not work, so whois goes
directly to the appropriate server. These include point-of-contact
handles for ARIN, nic.at, NORID, and RIPE, and domain names under ac.uk.
The options are as follows:
-a Use the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) database.
It contains network numbers used in those parts of the world
covered neither by APNIC, AfriNIC, LACNIC, nor by RIPE. The
query syntax is documented at
https://www.arin.net/resources/whoisrws/whois_api.html#nicname
-A Use the Asia/Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) database.
It contains network numbers used in East Asia, Australia, New
Zealand, and the Pacific islands. Get query syntax documentation
using whois -A help
-b Use the Network Abuse Clearinghouse database. It contains
addresses to which network abuse should be reported, indexed by
domain name.
-c TLD This is the equivalent of using the -h option with an argument of
"TLD.whois-servers.net". This can be helpful for locating
country-class TLD whois servers.
-f Use the African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) database.
It contains network numbers used in Africa and the islands of the
western Indian Ocean. Get query syntax documentation using whois
-f help
-g Use the US non-military federal government database, which
contains points of contact for subdomains of .GOV.
-h host
Use the specified host instead of the default. Either a host
name or an IP address may be specified.
-i Use the traditional Network Information Center (InterNIC)
(whois.internic.net) database. This now contains only
registrations for domain names under .COM, .NET, .EDU. You can
specify the type of object to search for like whois -i 'type
name' where type can be domain, nameserver, registrar. The name
can contain * wildcards.
-I Use the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) database.
-k Use the National Internet Development Agency of Korea's (KRNIC)
database. It contains network numbers and domain contact
information for Korea.
-l Use the Latin American and Caribbean IP address Regional Registry
(LACNIC) database. It contains network numbers used in much of
Latin America and the Caribbean.
-m Use the Route Arbiter Database (RADB) database. It contains
route policy specifications for a large number of operators'
networks.
-p port
Connect to the whois server on port. If this option is not
specified, whois defaults to port 43.
-P Use the PeeringDB database of AS numbers. It contains details
about presence at internet peering points for many network
operators.
-Q Do a quick lookup; whois will not attempt to follow referrals to
other whois servers. This is the default if a server is
explicitly specified using one of the other options or in an
environment variable. See also the -R option.
-r Use the R'eseaux IP Europ'eens (RIPE) database. It contains
network numbers and domain contact information for Europe. Get
query syntax documentation using whois -r help
-R Do a recursive lookup; whois will attempt to follow referrals to
other whois servers. This is the default if no server is
explicitly specified. See also the -Q option.
-S By default whois adjusts simple queries (without spaces) to
produce more useful output from certain whois servers, and it
suppresses some uninformative output. With the -S option, whois
sends the query and prints the output verbatim.
The operands specified to whois are treated independently and may be used
as queries on different whois servers.
ENVIRONMENT
WHOIS_SERVER The primary default whois server. If this is unset, whois
uses the RA_SERVER environment variable.
RA_SERVER The secondary default whois server. If this is unset,
whois will use whois.iana.org.
EXIT STATUS
The whois utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
EXAMPLES
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
Some whois servers support complex queries with dash-letter options. You
can use the -- option to separate whois command options from whois server
query options. A query containing spaces must be quoted as one argument
to the whois command. The following example asks the RIPE whois server
to return a brief description of its "domain" object type:
whois -r -- '-t domain'
STANDARDS
K. Harrenstien, M. Stahl, and E. Feinler, NICNAME/WHOIS, RFC 954, October
1985.
L. Daigle, WHOIS Protocol Specification, RFC 3912, September 2004.
HISTORY
The whois command appeared in 4.3BSD.
FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6 August 1, 2019 FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6
man2web Home...