Discuss mailing list

[Jeff Taylor <shdwdrgn AT sourpuss.net>]

We've had a few attempts at a whois service over the years, but with the 
recent move to storing a large number of domains in a central location, 
I thought I would try setting up a catch-all service for us.  I 
temporarily set up a service on the API server to test the new code.  
Eventually I will move it to whois.opennic.glue.

# whois -h ipv4.api.opennicproject.org <domain>

The output is based on http://wiki.opennicproject.org/WHOIS_Policy 
however is does not match exactly.  This service currently works with 
domains from dyn/free/fur/geek/indy/oss/parody/pirate.  If anyone 
running one of the other TLDs has a whois service in place, I can add an 
entry to do lookups there as well.  The same applies for TLDs that we 
are peering with.  This will also perform lookups on ICANN domains.  I 
found a source that tries to maintain a current list of whois servers 
for each TLD, however if you do happen to find a TLD that doesn't 
resolve, let me know and I'll see if I can find another source for them.

We've seen one problem with this -- the whois command does not work with 
IPv6 (thus forcing the ipv4 address above).  The solution is simple, the 
final whois.opennic.glue address will only have an IPv4 address.

Please let me know if you run into any other issues with this service.  
Once everything appears to be working correctly, I'll move the code to 
one of the NS0 servers.