WHOIS Version 1.6 Release Notes

May 2004
Jean-François Mezei
Vaxination informatique
jfmezei@vaxination.ca

Changes since previous version (1.5):

-Support for AS numbers. 
	The WHOIS utility now has a built-in table of authorities responsible
	for each AS number range. You can not interrogate any AS number by
	using a quesry such as ASnnnn where nnnn is the AS number.

-Added /HOST qualifier.
	To be more compatible with unix utilities, /HOST is now treated
	as equivalent to /SERVER.

-Updated query parsing
	The query parsing has been updated to include detection of AS number
	requests (and lookup of proper WHOIS server), as well as better
	handling of quoted strings.

-Updated WHOIS server lists.
	Since version 1.5 was released, a number of changes has occured in 
	the list of whois servers, notably the server responsible for the 
	.ORG tld.

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The precompiled objects:
	VAX: DEC C V6.0-001 on ____VMS VAX V7.2
      ALPHA: Compaq C V6.5-001 on OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-2

Since this product exists to fill a voids of the TCPIP Services product, 
it has been tested only on that stack.

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS

1-Unzip the package.

	Use an unzip program to extract the files in a directory of your 
        choice.

2- Set default to that directory

3-Build the executable

	Use @BUILD_WHOIS  to build the software.
	You can use the precompiled version or recompile it.
	
	The build procedure will set a WHOIS symbol so that you can test 
        it right away.

	The procedure creates WHOIS.EXE .If you are running a mixed 
        architecture cluster, you may wish to rename this file to an 
        architecture specific name prior to running the procedure to 
        build the executable for the other platform.
	

4-Cleanup installation

      -	Delete files no longer needed (for instance, if on VAX, you can 
        DELETE *.OBJ_ALPHA;* ).

      -	Set file protection and ownership to the directory and/or the 
        WHOIS.EXE file.

      -	Add the foreign command definition for  WHOIS.EXE to the 
        appropriate command procedure of your choice.

	The WHOIS program does not currently have built-in help.


5-Other utility files provided

SERVERS.COM	This file is used to generate SERVERS.H from a data file 
                obtained from http://www.geektools.com/dist/whoislist.gz 
                (you'll need to g-unzip it). It contains a 
                comprehensive list of whois servers or web sites for most 
                TLDs around the world. The reverse lookup server lists is 
                hardcoded in SERVERS.COM. After running this procedure, 
                an updated SERVERS.H file is created and you must then 
                rebuild WHOIS.EXE to include the updated information. 
                When executing SERVERS.COM, you supply the filename 
                containing the text file obtained from the geektools web 
                site.

ISO_3166.*	ISO_3166 is an indexed file containing the official 
                country list from international standards organisation. 
                The file contains a few additional entrys that are not 
                recognized by ISO (such as "uk" for united kingdom) but 
                widely used on the internet. The file is used by the 
                servers.com to include a country name in the table. 
                Should the file not be properly restored by UNZIP, its 
                FDL is provided for your convenience. 

AS-NUMBERS.TXT	Test file containing the list of AS number ranges and the 
		authorities for each range. It is obtained from:
		http://www.iana.org/assignments/as-numbers
		(rfc1930)

AS-NUMBERS.COM	command procedure to read the above and generate the 
		asnumbers.h file that isn included in the compiled unit.


6-To report problems and suggestions:
	Vaxination Informatique does not provide free support for the 
        utility, however, you can send bug reports and suggestions to 
        jfmezei@vaxination.ca