whois works on HP-UX but not Linux?

[Jeff Lightner_1]

Does the HP-UX whois do something differently from the one that comes with Linux?

On looking into a failed email I found I couldn't resolve the server name (sas.sumsung.com) so tried www.samsung.com to no avail. Google shows there is a page at the latter address. I then attempted to do a whois from my Linux (FC4) workstation and found that failed when it got past internic.net and tried querying whois.yesnic.com. (whois yesnic.com also fails)

Looking at DNS stuff and internic.net whois shows me information for both yesnic.com and samsung.com.

I then tried it from my HP-UX box on which the email was originally generated and found that whois there correctly displayed the information even though it can not successfully nslookup any of the information for samsung.com or yesnic.com.

My underlying issue appears to be failure to resolve yesnic.com in DNS but I'm curious how it is HP-UX could get the right whois information when Linux fails. I've tried it on multiple machines and all the HP-UX hosts (in their own VLAN) can get the whois to work but none of the Linux hosts in a separate VLAN can. Although they are in different VLANs they all use the same resov.conf.

So the main question is why does HP-UX whois work for these domains but not Linux?

Secondary question is how would I find out if yesnic.com has me blacklisted since it appears they are refusing my lookup requests but DNSstuff.com can resolve IPs correctly?

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

whois is not native to HP-UX. Maybe it comes with BIND, perhaps some other source. If it performs differently, its clearly not from the same place the Linux distros got it.

How any domain resolves depends on the /etc/resolv.conf servers. whois is not a good tool for looking into these issues.

For mail trace: /var/adm/syslog/mail.log

I'm thinking this is a firewall programming issue since you mentioned the VLAN configuration differs between HP-UX and Linux.

Secondary: DNSSTUFF does have a blacklist listing that is reasonably accurrate.

SEP

[Jeff Lightner_1]

I don't get what you mean by "not native". The file came with our base HP-UX install. We didn't add BIND to any of the HP-UX servers (the DNS servers are on a different platform).

The whois command exists on HP servers going back to 10.20. swlist shows the following for the whois command itself on 11i:

InternetSrvcs.INETSVCS-RUN: /usr/bin/whois

Not native maybe - distributed with HP-UX it certainly is if you mean that in the same sense you mean sendmail is "not native" either. HP-UX brings in their own spin on sendmail.

I understand that whois and nslookup are not equivalent tools. My question however was specifically why the whois on HP-UX appears to be working.

I had already asked the Security admin about differences in the vlan so far as this goes and he indicated their aren't any. Also I'd disabled iptables on the Linux host just to make sure that wasn't a factor either. I do NOT run SELinux so I know that too is not an issue.

Also I had already looked at the mail log - that is where I found the address as well as "parse" messages which other posts in this forum suggest is an issue with lookup.

Finally I wasn't asking about DNSstuff denied me but rather the Registrar for Samsung.com. Given that all my other external lookups seem to work it appears something is blocking queries to Samsung.com and the whois and ping results suggest to me it is actually the registrar blocking me before I get to Samsung.

Samsung is in South Korea so I had also asked my Security admin if he was blocking that country and he said no.

[Steven Schweda]

> Does the HP-UX whois do something
> differently [...]

Probably.

> I found I couldn't resolve the server name
> (sas.sumsung.com) [...]

It really might help if you said _how_ you
tried to resolve it. Your question mentions
"whois", but "whois" is not how _I_ would try
to "resolve the server name". I'd use
nslookup:

alp $ nslookup sas.sumsung.com
[...]
Name: sas.sumsung.com
Address: 72.51.27.51

> I then attempted to do a whois from my
> Linux (FC4) workstation

How? Actual command?

> and found that failed [...]

Failed how? Actual results from that actual
command?

> Looking at DNS stuff [...]

Well, that explains exactly what you did, to
anyone who saw you do it, perhaps.

> My underlying issue appears to be [...]

It's not as issue, it's a problem, and your
main problem, as I see it, is an apparent
inability to describe precisely what you
want, what you did to get it, and what
happened whan you tried to get it.

> So the main question is why does HP-UX
> whois work for these domains but not Linux?

If your main question is why something fails
on a Linux system, then my first question
might be, "Why ask in an HP-UX forum?"

> [...] they are refusing my lookup requests
> [...]

What does that mean? "[L]ookup" how?

Very badly formed questions abound in this
forum, but this may be about as bad as they
come.

[Jeff Lightner_1]

The spaced in "DNS stuff" was a typo - you might have guessed that I meant a site like DNSstuff.com by mention of internic.net on the same line. I guess it was silly of me to assume someone that knew anything about DNS and/or whois would know what DNS Stuff and internic.net were.

As I made clear in my post I am interested in "whois" more than the DNS aspect of it. As also should have been clear there IS some interrelationship between the two things.

The command I used, Mr [expletive deleted], was oddly enough "whois". I don't see how you could have missed that since that was the main point of the question Believe it or not there is actually a command called whois in UNIX and Linux.

The reason I posted HERE was to ask what the HP-UX COMMAND does differently. Unfortunately there is no "HP-UX vs Linux" forum that would have been more appropriate.

If all you're going to do is post a rant rather than reply to a question that is asked why bother? If questions annoy you just unsubcribe from the forums and you won't see then any longer.

[Jeff Lightner_1]

The spaced in "DNS stuff" was a typo - you might have guessed that I meant a site like DNSstuff.com by mention of internic.net on the same line. I guess it was silly of me to assume someone that knew anything about DNS and/or whois would know what DNS Stuff and internic.net were.

As I made clear in my post I am interested in "whois" more than the DNS aspect of it. As also should have been clear there IS some interrelationship between the two things.

The command I used, Mr [expletive deleted], was oddly enough "whois". I don't see how you could have missed that since that was the main point of the question Believe it or not there is actually a command called whois in UNIX and Linux.

The reason I posted HERE was to ask what the HP-UX COMMAND does differently. Unfortunately there is no "HP-UX vs Linux" forum that would have been more appropriate.

If all you're going to do is post a rant rather than reply to a question that is asked why bother? If questions annoy you just unsubcribe from the forums and you won't see them any longer.

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] you might have guessed [...]

Guessing what you might have meant is not my
job, any more than guessing what you did or
guessing what happened when you did it are.

> The command I used, [...], was oddly
> enough "whois".

Interesting. When I do that, it doesn't tell
me much:

td176> whois
usage: whois [ -h host ] name

As I said, "Actual command?"

> If all you're going to do is post a rant
> rather than reply to a question that is
> asked why bother?

I actually had some (dim) hope that you might
take the hint and provide the information
requested ("Actual command?", "Actual results
from that actual command?", and so on), but I
see that my hopes were too high. If you
really can't describe your intent, your
actions, or their results, then you might do
better with a psychic hot-line than with any
of the ITRC fora.

[Tor-Arne Nostdal]

The HP-UX 11i is actually distributed in several variations. You have the Internet Express version of 11i, which includes several extra Internet service (open source) features. This version is not so commonly in use and I suppose this is what confused SEP.

You don't say which Linux you're using...

In some Linux system the following message appear when using nslookup:
"Note: nslookup is deprecated and may be removed from future releases. Consider using the 'dig' or 'hosts' programs instead."

There is differencies in behaviour in many commands between Linux and HP-UX, even though they appear to be the same. The code is rewritten and the developers might have had different philosophy when making their implementations. Sometimes you just have to find a workaround, other times you could customize or implement another program that behaves more equal.

Related to you're problem:
You're nslookup seems a bit strange as it seems that it's not pointing correctly to sas.sumsung.com

alp $ nslookup sas.sumsung.com
[...]
Name: sas.sumsung.com
Address: 72.51.27.51

My lookup shows:
Name: sas.sumsung.com
Address: 217.68.70.69

Perhaps you should try to do a reverse lookup. Here is the result I've got when I reversed the lookup.

Name: p1-ha-hf-cluster.medialogik.com
Address: 72.51.27.51

/Tor-Arne

[Jeff Lightner_1]

Steven Protter and Tor-Arne thank you for attempting to help.

There does appear to be an attempting DNS queries to a South Korea. The whois question was just to understand the difference between the whois on two different platforms. Since everyone is focusing on the DNS issue rather than the whois question there doesn't seem to be any point in keeping this thread open.

Steven Schweda:
Pretending you responded as you did was a "hint" rather than simply a display of your antisocial turn of mind is rather specious. If you needed more information you might have asked for it. Instead you chose to be as insulting as possible. That makes it clear your true intent had nothing to do with "helping" but rather was all about trying to salve some inferiority complex you have by asserting your presumed "guru" status over someone that was asking for assistance.

For the record: I've been working on UNIX since the mid 80s, have been an admin since 1991, and have worked on HP-UX full time since 1995. I'm also a member of Mensa. However unlike you I realize that:
A) I wasn't born knowing any of this so when I answer questions others ask I don't come from a position of innate knowledge but from the memory that the knowledge was acquired over the years.
B) Despite the length of time I've been doing all this that there ARE still things I can learn from others so I'm not afraid to ask when I run into something I'm not an expert at.

You on the other hand masked your inability to answer the question behind a rant that is unworthy of a person that is pretending to help others by reading forums designed for that purpose. It always amuses me that worms such as you that wouldn't look cross at people in person will use online media as a way to bully others.

[Jeff Lightner_1]

Closing

[Steven Schweda]

Gee, now I feel terrible, but I still don't
know what you were trying to do.

> I've been working on UNIX since the mid 80s, [...]

So much experience, and you still have this
much trouble describing a problem?

(Please, no points for this.)