This is jwhois, an improved Whois client capable of selecting Whois server to query based on a flexible configuration file using either regular expressions or CIDR blocks.
Please send bug reports, suggestions, improvements, rewrites and other material to bug-jwhois@gnu.org.
In the example/ subdirectory in the distribution archive is an example configuration file for jwhois. This file should contain all of the known public Whois server records. Any changes to either host listed in that example configuration file should be reported to the maintainer so that the change can be included in future releases.
The configuration file should reside in the /usr/local/etc directory, or the directory that you specified using the --sysconfdir switch to the configure script.
./configure
If jwhois can't find any configuration file, the queries will be directed to a default host. The default value is `whois.internic.net', but this can be changed by using the --enable-DEFAULTHOST switch to the configure script.
This version of jwhois includes a functionality that can cache Whois responses. The cached information is stored in a local database which can be read and written to by jwhois. The default location for this file is /usr/local/var, but this can be changed by adding another directory with --localstatedir=
The location of the database can also be set in the configuration file. For this to work, jwhois has to be able to read and write to the cache file. If you're on a single-user machine, this can be done easily by creating a cache file and changing the owner of it to the user you're running as. If you have several users, you would normally allow a specific group to write to the cache file and setgid the jwhois binary to this group.
If you don't know how to do this, you can ask someone in your area with more UNIX experience. Chances are, if you don't use jwhois actively, there is little point in configuring a cache since it would not be used very much anyway.
jwhois has support for IPv6 using the inet6-apps package from The Inner Net. The package is delivered with the libinet6.a library which consists of a number of functions required for IPv6, such as improved versions of getaddrinfo(). If your systems C library already has support for IPv6 in getaddrinfo(), you don't need the inet6-apps package.
There is a command line switch called -v or --verbose. Use it. The output that it gives can give significant help with locating a potential problem with jwhois. When attempting to use the cache feature, the most common problem is that jwhois doesn't have permission to write the database files that it need. Use the verbose flag to see if this is indeed the problem.
If you want to receive even more debugging output, you can specify multiple -v switches. If you specify more than one -v switch, debugging output is enabled.
JWHOIS can be obtained via anonymous FTP from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/jwhois/
If you use JWHOIS and find it useful, you could always send a message to us at help-jwhois@gnu.org to let us know. You don't have to do this, but we would appreciate the gesture :-)
The first public version of jwhois (version 1.1) was released in April
Since then, some ten public releases has been made, arriving at the jwhois as it exists today. Here is a brief outline of the development:
1.1 Written in Perl with a standalone caching proxy. 2.0 Rewrite in C. Standalone caching proxy dropped from distribution. 2.1 Better documentation. Support for whois servers on other ports than 43. 2.2 Support for CIDR blocks and IPv6. 2.3 Redirections, caches and i18n are introduced. 2.4 Maintanance release preparing for 3.0 3.0 Rwhois and http support. Rewriting of queries introduced. 3.1 Added "default" to configuration file. 3.2 Added advanced rewrite of queries.
A more detailed list of changes can be found in the file NEWS.