WHOIS Server

[mjohnston at skyweb.ca (Mark Johnston)]

Odhiambo Washington <wash_(_at_)_wananchi_(_dot_)_com> wrote:
> What is the sane way of doing whois for "any" domain extension
> (.com/.org/.biz, etc)?

As far as I know, you have to keep track of the different servers manually, or 
use someone else's server.  I use the Web-based whois at dnsstuff.com, which 
seems to work with all TLDs, but I wouldn't recommend a web-based one like 
that for high-volume whois'ing.

> Is it sane to think that I can run my own local whois server/interface?
> If yes, I'll appreciate some pointers. It would be nice if I had an
> interface to whois on our website.

I've never tried, but it seems eminently sane to me.  What about Bill 
Weinman's BW whois at http://whois.bw.org ?  It works both as a CGI and as a 
command-line script, and the author maintains a list of TLDs and WHOIS 
servers (http://whois.bw.org/dist/current/tld.conf).  There's also the 
standard Linux whois client, at http://www.linux.it/~md/software/, that keeps 
track of TLDs - I don't know how up-to-date the list is or where it comes 
from, though.

HTH,
Mark