Package: whois Version: 4.7.5 Severity: normal In my environment, I have WHOIS_HIDE set to 1 to reduce annoying legal messages from whois. Today I noticed that this causes whois lookups to fail when requesting information from the Dotster (dotster.com) whois servers.
I can only assume that Dotster (and not any other registrars) did in fact change their disclaimer recently. Other domains work fine, and Dotster-registered domains work with WHOIS_HIDE unset. I am unfamiliar with the implementation of the whois protocol (perhaps the server asks for the hash of an approved disclaimer text before proceeding), but I think at least a fallback to whatever whois does without -H or WHOIS_HIDE turned on (if not an outright slash-&-burn of the disclaimer out of the results in spite of what the server wants) would be an improvement. Transcript of an example failure: $ whois geekymedia.com Whois Server Version 1.3 Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information. Domain Name: GEEKYMEDIA.COM Registrar: DOTSTER, INC. Whois Server: whois.dotster.com Referral URL: http://www.dotster.com Name Server: NS1.DREAMHOST.COM Name Server: NS2.DREAMHOST.COM Name Server: NS3.DREAMHOST.COM Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK Updated Date: 06-may-2005 Creation Date: 16-may-2000 Expiration Date: 16-may-2006 >>> Last update of whois database: Sat, 9 Jul 2005 16:17:07 EDT <<< Catastrophic error: disclaimer text has been changed. Please upgrade this program. -- System Information: Debian Release: testing/unstable APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Kernel: Linux 2.6.13-rc2 Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8) Versions of packages whois depends on: ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-22 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an ii libidn11 0.5.13-1.0 GNU libidn library, implementation whois recommends no packages. -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]