4 Global options

The global options of jwhois configure some basic facilities that are to be used for all hosts and queries made.

cachefile

By default, the location of the cache file is /usr/local/var/jwhois.db, but this can be changed at compile time. The option cachefile also changes the location.

Note that the cache feature might have been disabled at compile time and thus not be available on this system.

cacheexpire

The default expire time for all cached objects it 7 days (168 hours). this can be changed with the cacheexpire option. The value is the number of hours that objects is considered to be current.

whois-servers-domain

Whois-servers.net is a service offered by the CenterGate Research Group. They register CNAMEs in the whois-servers.net domain for every known top-level domain, pointing to the appropriate whois server.

When querying for `wildebeest.se' for example, jwhois would look for an address se.whois-servers.net and query the appropriate server based on that information.

If you wish to make whois-servers.net-style queries using another domain name than whois-servers.net, you can change this option to the domain name you want.

browser-pathname

browser-stdarg

browser-postarg

post-as-file

These options control the HTTP support on jwhois. browser-pathname should be set to the path and executable of the browser you wish to use to download information from HTTP-gateways. This is normally a program such as lynx or curl.

browser-stdarg sets the arguments to pass to the browser in order to have the browser direct its options to the standard output. jwhois catches this information and displays it to the user.

browser-postarg sets the arguments used to enable a processing of POST requests.

post-as-file selects the way POST data is sent to the browser. If set to true, lynx-style processing is enabled, which means that the program, when passed the option specified in browser-postarg, should accept one variable per line of input on standard input, terminated with three dashes. If set to false, w3m-style processing is enabled, which means that the program, when passed this option, should consider the parameter that follows the one specified in browser-postarg as a file name from which to read POST data.

connect-timeout enables a timeout on connects to remote hosts. It should be set to a positive integer value. When the specified number of seconds have elapsed and the remote host hasn't answered, the connection will be aborted. If this option is not set, the default timeout is 75 seconds.

Examples:

     cachefile = "/var/lib/jwhois.db";
     cacheexpire = 168;
     browser-pathname = "/usr/bin/lynx";
     browser-stdarg = "-dump";
     browser-postarg = "-post_data";
     connect-timeout = 3;