[ moved to tech-userlevel from source-changes ]

In message <Pine.NEB.4.21.0010011138000.10983-100000@localhost>, David Brownlee
 writes:
>	Maybe some of the options could be documented in whois.1?

That sounds reasonable, I don't have the time right now.
Would you care to do so or file a PR?

If so, please note that the DESCRIPTION of whois is rather incorrect,
and I suppose some flames should fall upon the person who
integrated the RIPE whois (hrmm..tron -- why was that done?). That is:

| DESCRIPTION
|      whois searches for an object in the RIPE Network Management database.
|      The key can be either a name (such as "Karrenberg"),a nic-handle (such as
|      "DK58"), a network number ("192.87.45.0/24") or a domain name
|      ("ripe.net").

But of course, this is not right. Though we use the RIPE whois
client, we set the default server to the traditional default,
which only allows looking up information in the InterNIC's database
(or ICANN's, mumble mumble), but certainly not the RIPE database.

there's other relatively egregious stuff in there...

(if you don't want to do this, I'll file a PR at my earliest convenience.)


I think it'd be perfectly reasonable to document

  whois.internic.net		     authoritative for all icann domains?
  whois.arin.net		     ARIN network number assignments.
  whois.ripe.net		     RIPE domains, assignments,& routing info.
  whois.ra.net			     Merit/IRR routing info

  whois.geektools.com		     recursing proxies that query internic.net
  whois.fucknsi.com aka		       and then more -- or perhaps use rwhois?
    pallas.eruditorum.org	       mechanism is unclear

  whois.opensrs.net		     same as above, but also authoritative for
				     OpenSRS domains.

  whois.networksolutions.com	     the Internic's server for their own domain
				     names.


that's off the top of my head.

--jhawk
  

>                David/absolute
>			       -- www.netbsd.org: A pmap for every occasion --
>
>
>On Sat, 30 Sep 2000, John Hawkinson wrote:
>
>> 
>> Module Name:	basesrc
>> Committed By:	jhawk
>> Date:		Sat Sep 30 14:05:49 UTC 2000
>> 
>> Modified Files:
>> 	basesrc/usr.bin/whois: whois.c
>> 
>> Log Message:
>> Return to whois.internic.net.
>> whois.networksolutions.com is just wrong -- it only returns information
>> for Network Solutions domains.
>> whois.opensrs.net is a bit better -- it returns information for OpenSRS
>> domains, and otherwise recurses to the correct whois server for other
>> domains -- unfortunately it is not canonical, and cannot be construed as
>> "correct." Other recursing proxies include whois.geektools.com and pallas.
>> eruditorum.org, neither of which is "official" either.
>> 
>> For good or for ill, we go back to whois.internic.net, which is the canonica
>l
>> source for this information.
>> 
>> 
>> To generate a diff of this commit:
>> cvs rdiff -r1.13 -r1.14 basesrc/usr.bin/whois/whois.c