WHOIS.CONF(5)

💖 WHOIS.CONF(5) 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because we're about to talk about whois.conf — the little glow-up file that tells the whois client which WHOIS servers to hit up. this is from the Debian GNU/Linux manual, section 5 (that's the file formats girlies, iykyk) ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

whois.conf — the alternative WHOIS servers list for the whois client, aka the VIP guest list for your queries 👑

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

/etc/whois.conf

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so basically this file is a whole list of WHOIS servers that can augment or override the built-in list that ships with the client. like, the client already knows some servers, but this file lets you add more or straight up say "no bestie, use this one instead" 💅

it's a plain text file in ASCII encoding. no fancy unicode, no emoji (sad, i know 😭).

every line has exactly two fields:

1. a pattern to match the WHOIS object identifier
2. the corresponding WHOIS server domain name

the fields get separated by a non-empty sequence of space or tabular characters — so one space, five spaces, a tab, a chaotic lil mix, whatever, it all works 🫶

and if a line starts with a hash character (#)? that's a free comment, bestie, it gets completely ignored. not considered. ghosted. 💀

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🔍 about the pattern (the important part) 🔍

the pattern is a case-insensitive extended regular expression if the whois client was compiled with POSIX regular expressions support. slay.

otherwise? it falls back to a simple case-insensitive suffix comparison against the WHOIS object identifier. still cute, just simpler ✨

⚠️ important warning bestie: Internationalized domain names (IDN) must be specified in ascii-compatible encoding (ACE) format. no raw unicode domain names, fr fr. it's giving "no cap" energy. 🙈

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🌈 EXAMPLE 🌈

here's exactly what it looks like, character for character, don't touch anything:

\.nz$             nz.whois-servers.net
# Hangul Korean TLD
\.xn--3e0b707e$   whois.kr
# Private ASNs
^as645(1[2-9]|2[0-9]|3[0-4])$    whois.example.net

see how the comments are just vibing there being ignored? and the patterns are doing their lil regex thing? iconic. 👑

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🍓 FILES 🍓

• /etc/whois.conf

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• whois(1) — go read this one too bestie, it's the main character 💜

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

this manual page was written by Petr Písař <ppisar@redhat.com> and is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or higher. respect the license, it's the law (literally) ⭐

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and that's the whole vibe! this page is from the Debian GNU/Linux manual, dated 2019-12-30, and yeah — whois.conf(5), written by Petr Písař. mwah, go configure your WHOIS servers bestie 💖✨🎀