Debian Bug report logs - #172293
whois: Whois server for nz is out of date

Toggle useless messages

Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Ewen McNeill <ewen@basilica.la.naos.co.nz>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: whois: Whois server for nz is out of date

Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 12:05:28 +1300

Package: whois
Version: 4.5.25
Severity: normal

The whois client appears to have "whois.domainz.net.nz" hard coded as
the whois server for the "nz" top level domain.  Due to various
rearrangements in the management of the "nz" top level domain (see
generally http://www.dnc.org.nz/) Domainz, who used to operate the
registry and this whois server are now merely one of the registrars,
and appear to have disabled their whois server.

The current "nz" registry is running an official whois server which has
been operational for a couple of months, at whois.srs.net.nz.

However even better than hard coding the whois server address into the
program would be making use of "nz.whois-servers.net" which is an entry
in a domain created, as far as I can tell, explicitly to make it easier
to locate the whois server for a particular top level domain.  I'm told
that the maintainers of whois-servers.net are fairly responsive, and the
entries seem to be reasonably up to date.

whois -h nz.whois-servers.net srs.net.nz 

works fine, and the entry has already been updated to contact the
"nz" registry run whois server.

Please change the whois client to use:

nz.whois-servers.net

for domains under the "nz" top level domain.

-- System Information
Debian Release: 3.0
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux basilica 2.4.19 #1 Sat Oct 26 18:05:51 NZDT 2002 i686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages whois depends on:
ii  libc6                         2.2.5-11.2 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an

Message #10 received at 172293@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Ewen McNeill <ewen@naos.co.nz>

To: "Marco d'Itri" <md@Linux.IT>

Cc: 172293@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#172293: whois: Whois server for nz is out of date

Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 12:47:41 +1300

In message <20021208234106.GA6732@wonderland.linux.it>, "Marco d'Itri" writes:
>On Dec 09, Ewen McNeill <ewen@basilica.la.naos.co.nz> wrote:
> >The whois client appears to have "whois.domainz.net.nz" hard coded as
> >the whois server for the "nz" top level domain.  Due to various
>
>Fixed in 4.5.32.

Thanks.

> >However even better than hard coding the whois server address into the
> >program would be making use of "nz.whois-servers.net" which is an entry
> >in a domain created, [....]
>
>I wrote this client to not have to depend on anybody else's data.
>Usually my list is more up to date than the official one at ICANN.

The difficulty is that this means that any time there is a change
everyone has to obtain a new version of the software, or manually
override the whois server on the command line until they do.

Given that many users following, eg, Debian stable, will not
automatically get a new version for 1-2 years (ie, when Debian next
releases a new major release), that's a long time for the records to be
out of date.

In contrast using something like whois-servers.net means that the
changes are immediately visible to everyone, without software changes,
as soon as they are made.

In the meantime I guess this means that I either keep overriding the
whois server on the command line for the next 18 months or so (guestimated
time until next release, based on past history), or try to build a more
recent version as a .deb under Woody.

Ewen

Message #15 received at 172293-done@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Marco d'Itri <md@Linux.IT>

To: Ewen McNeill <ewen@basilica.la.naos.co.nz>, 172293-done@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#172293: whois: Whois server for nz is out of date

Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 00:41:06 +0100

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On Dec 09, Ewen McNeill <ewen@basilica.la.naos.co.nz> wrote:

 >The whois client appears to have "whois.domainz.net.nz" hard coded as
 >the whois server for the "nz" top level domain.  Due to various
Fixed in 4.5.32.

 >However even better than hard coding the whois server address into the
 >program would be making use of "nz.whois-servers.net" which is an entry
 >in a domain created, as far as I can tell, explicitly to make it easier
 >to locate the whois server for a particular top level domain.  I'm told
 >that the maintainers of whois-servers.net are fairly responsive, and the
 >entries seem to be reasonably up to date.
I wrote this client to not have to depend on anybody else's data.
Usually my list is more up to date than the official one at ICANN.

-- 
ciao,
Marco

[Message part 2 (application/pgp-signature, inline)]

Message #20 received at 172293@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Marco d'Itri <md@Linux.IT>

To: Ewen McNeill <ewen@naos.co.nz>

Cc: 172293@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#172293: whois: Whois server for nz is out of date

Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 00:50:15 +0100

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On Dec 09, Ewen McNeill <ewen@naos.co.nz> wrote:

 >The difficulty is that this means that any time there is a change
 >everyone has to obtain a new version of the software, or manually
 >override the whois server on the command line until they do.
Yes, by design.

 >In the meantime I guess this means that I either keep overriding the
 >whois server on the command line for the next 18 months or so (guestimated
 >time until next release, based on past history), or try to build a more
 >recent version as a .deb under Woody.
Building whois is trivial, but you can also override everything in the
system-wide config file.

-- 
ciao,
Marco

[Message part 2 (application/pgp-signature, inline)]

Message #25 received at 172293@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Ewen McNeill <ewen@naos.co.nz>

To: "Marco d'Itri" <md@Linux.IT>

Cc: 172293@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#172293: whois: Whois server for nz is out of date

Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 13:02:45 +1300

In message <20021208235015.GA6868@wonderland.linux.it>, "Marco d'Itri" writes:
>On Dec 09, Ewen McNeill <ewen@naos.co.nz> wrote:
> >In the meantime I guess this means that I either keep overriding the
> >whois server on the command line for the next 18 months or so [or
> >try to build a newer version from source]
>
>Building whois is trivial, but you can also override everything in the
>system-wide config file.

This system-wide config file would be /etc/whois.conf?  It is mentioned
in the whois(1) man page, but doesn't appear to:
(a) be packaged in the Debian package (policy violation?)
(b) have a man page documenting the format (policy violation?)

Even in the source code archive I cannot see an example /etc/whois.conf,
so it's tricky to know what format the entries should be in.  The only
documentation seems to be the source code (whois.c: match_config_file())
which parses the file.

Would you like me to file seperate bugs on the missing config file, and
config file documentation?

Ewen

Send a report that this bug log contains spam.