How do I use 'whois' on cygwin?

Question

I've just installed the whois package on cygwin. Its description is GNU Whois, I'm assuming it refers to jwhois? I'm thinking the package is completely broken, but just in case I'm doing something wrong, here are some input and output results:

$ whois
Usage: whois [OPTION]... OBJECT...
[rest of help here]

$ whois superuser.com
connect: Connection timed out

$ whois --help
whois: unknown option -- -
Usage: whois [OPTION]... OBJECT...
[rest of help here]

$ whois --version
whois: unknown option -- -
Usage: whois [OPTION]... OBJECT...
[rest of help here]

So, is this package broken or am I not using it correctly?

Answer 1

It looks to me like whois is failing to connect to the server to fetch the information needed. You can specify WHOIS_SERVER to use another server than the default one.

Try the following:

> env WHOIS_SERVER=whois.ripe.net whois superuser.com

or

> whois -h whois.ripe.net superuser.com

You can check if your internet connection can connect to a WHOIS service with any telnet client:

> telnet whois.ripe.net 43
Trying 193.0.6.135...
Connected to whois.ripe.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
% This is the RIPE Database query service.
% The objects are in RPSL format.
%
% The RIPE Database is subject to Terms and Conditions.
% See http://www.ripe.net/db/support/db-terms-conditions.pdf