The whois command provides information on Internet DNS registrations for organizations. This can be useful for learning or verifying information regarding ownership of a domain name, contact information for an organization, etc.
Some examples include:
# whois google.com # whois ubuntu.com
Syntax
The syntax of the whois command is:
# whois [options] {domain name} whois is a client for the whois directory service that you can use to look up registration and user information. For example, if I want to find out who is behind the ietf.org domain (note that you can pay your domain registrar to keep that information private), I would do the following:
# whois ietf.org 1 % IANA WHOIS server % for more information on IANA, visit http://www.iana.org % This query returned 1 object refer: whois.pir.org domain: ORG organisation: Public Interest Registry (PIR) address: 11911 Freedom Drive 10th Floor, address: Suite 1000 address: Reston, VA 20190 address: United States contact: administrative name: Director of Operations, Compliance and Customer Support organisation: Public Interest Registry (PIR) address: 11911 Freedom Drive 10th Floor, address: Suite 1000 address: Reston, VA 20190 address: United States phone: +1 703 889 5778 fax-no: +1 703 889 5779 e-mail: ops@pir.org ...
whois Command Examples
1. Get information about a domain name:
# whois example.com
2. Get information about an IP address:
# whois 8.8.8.8
3. Get abuse contact for an IP address:
# whois -b 8.8.8.8