There is a version of whois for linux (you can find it on freshmeat.net)
which appears to do what is requested. I have been thinking for a while
now that something similar for netbsd would be nice.

[nigel@cartman nigel]$ whois nelgin.nu
.NU Domain Ltd Whois service

Found exact match:

Domain: nelgin.nu
ID: 7164
Created: 13-Feb-1998
Modified: 09-Feb-2000
Expires: 13-Feb-2004

[nigel@cartman nigel]$ whois sunet.se

# Copyright (c) 2001 NIC-SE. All rights reserved.
[snip]
*domainname.name:                sunet.se
*domainname.status:              REGISTRERAT
*domainname.regdate:             1989-03-20

*domainname.dns.data:
sunet.se.                  NS  ns.kth.se.
sunet.se.                  NS  server.nordu.net.
sunet.se.                  NS  sunic.sunet.se.
sunic.sunet.se.            A   192.36.125.2


Now that is useful!

Regards
Nigel

On Fri, Feb 02, 2001 at 08:16:31PM -0500, gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 02, 2001 at 02:50:33PM -0800, Peter Losher wrote:
> > Would it be possible to have the whois program in NetBSD follow the SRS
> > entry and query the relevant whois server?  I believe this used to happen
> > a while ago,
> 
> Don't believe our whois has ever done that. But internic used to not
> have such a braindead response to whois requests. This "improvement"
> came with splitting out to multiple registrars.
> 
> > and has been the case in FreeBSD for some time.
> 
> Really? Neat.
> 
> Are they just using one of the (many) third-party whois packages, or
> is this a modification of the RIPE version?
> 
> > Is there a particular reason why this is the case?
> 
> Well, since RIPE whois defaults to whois.internic.net, which one
> does have to contact in order to figure out which registrar's whois
> server is responsible for the domain in question, it's not all bad.
> It's just that the output from whois.internic.net changed when they
> and netsol became two separate entities.
> 
> I'd be all for having whois do some magic parsing for me, and it
> should be really easy to do and send-pr, but I'm lazy and content
> aliasing whois to whois -h whois.geektools.com. ;^>
> 
>        ~ g r @ eclipsed.net

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