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A modern jwhois.conf

jwhois.conf is the configuration file for the jwhois WHOIS client.

Here, you can find a fork of jwhois.conf which has been made relatively current and is actively maintained. (This repository is not affiliated with jwhois or its authors.)

Please open a new issue to submit an update or correction.

Objective

Although jwhois is a popular program, and is even the default WHOIS client on some operating systems, the official jwhois.conf distribution files [1] [2] haven't been updated in many years. Various users have provided updates, some as patches to OS-specific jwhois distributions, others on GitHub and various forums and blogs. Few of these appear to have made it upstream, or into any one iteration of jwhois.conf.

The goal of this fork is to provide a stable and reliable repository for ongoing updates to jwhois.conf.

Methodology

Here's an overview of how the jwhois.conf in this repository is put together:

  1. The jwhois.conf from Fedora 36 [3] was chosen as a starting point, because it had seen more recent updates compared to any official release.

  2. An effort was made to locate outstanding discrepancies which have been reported by users to public forums; for example, the official jwhois GitHub issue tracker, the Red Hat Bugzilla, Stack Overflow, Ask Fedora, and others. These updates were verified and manually merged into the file.

  3. IANA [4] and ICANN [5] both publish data describing the TLDs currently in use and, to some extent, the WHOIS facilities offered for each TLD. This data is automatically processed on a weekly basis to discover new or terminated TLDs and other changes that should be reflected in the whois-servers { } stanza.

  4. The Regional Internet Registries (AFRINIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC, and RIPE) publish data files indicating which portions of the IP space are managed by each Registry. This data is automatically processed on a daily basis to populate most of the cidr-blocks { } stanza. CIDRs are aggregated to produce the shortest possible accurate configuration.

  5. Changes discovered by the automated processes described above are manually reviewed prior to being committed. Some manual overrides have been put in place to supersede faulty or missing data.

  6. Please open a new issue to submit an update or correction.

Files in this repository

Most users will only need...

  • jwhois.conf: The latest version of the full configuration file. This is a drop-in replacement for the existing file on your server.

If your environment has existing customizations for jwhois, like enabling the cache or setting a connection timeout, you can create your own custom "stub" file and run the builder script so your changes are preserved. The necessary files are in the components directory:

  • components/build-jwhois-conf.sh: A bash script that will assemble a configuration file from the latest components.

  • components/jwhois.conf.stub: A "stub" file without fully populated whois-servers { } or cidr-blocks { } stanzas, but with placeholders so the build script can merge in the correct records.

  • components/records-ipv4-cidrs.txt: The RIR IPv4 CIDR assignment records for the cidr-blocks { } stanza.

  • components/records-tlds-slds.txt:The TLD and SLD WHOIS records for the whois-servers { } stanza.

To create your own "stub" file, copy jwhois.conf.stub to jwhois.conf.stub.local and add your custom settings there. Running the build-jwhois-conf.sh script will assemble a configuration file from your local stub. You'll want to check out the repository and periodically run git pull so that the latest changes to the component files are picked up.

Caveats

Not every existing TLD can be supported. Some registrars restrict their port 43 WHOIS service to authorized users (e.g. domain resellers). Others don't operate a traditional WHOIS service at all, requiring web-based lookups instead. Most of these are noted in the jwhois.conf file with a corresponding comment. Please open a new issue if you'd like to submit an update or correction.

In cases where a WHOIS server CNAMEs to the underlying registrar, the in-bailiwick label is usually preferred. For example, the server for academy is specified as whois.nic.academy, even though that CNAMEs to whois.donuts.co. Management of TLDs sometimes shifts between registrars; using an in-bailiwick label can make these transitions seamless.

At present, only IPv4 data from the Regional Internet Registries is being automatically processed. The IPv6 portion of the cidr-blocks { } stanza remains largely as-is from the forked Fedora 36 jwhois.conf.

References

1. jwhois.conf on savannah.gnu.org, last updated 2011-04-14
2. jwhois.conf on GitHub, last updated 2015-10-24
3. jwhois.conf from Fedora 36, last updated 2021-11-03
4. https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt
5. "Registry Listings - ICANN"