Additionally 'whois' is free form text. Whois doesn't include a AI to workout what this free form text means so, no, there isn't a actual referral for a whois application to use. Additionally we should be publishing where the whois server for the tld is in the DNS. whois applications could be looking for this then falling back to other methods. e.g. _whois._tcp.pro. srv 0 100 43 whois.afilias.net. If we want machines to follow referrals we have to provide them in appropriate forms. Mark In message <56E0BFD4.7020403@dougbarton.us>, Doug Barton writes:
Joseph,
Thanks for the update. However the current state of things is not good ... My Ubuntu host tries to use whois.dotproregistry.net, which has no address records. FreeBSD by default uses pro.whois-servers.net, which resolves to whois.registrypro.pro (which has an A record), but never returns with any data (arguably worse than failing immediately with an obvious error).
If it were me, I would have done the following:
1. Reach out to the OS vendors and the folks at whois-servers.net with information that the proper host name for your whois service is changing. Include a drop-dead date of 3 years in the future for the old names to stop working.
2. Place a CNAME at the two (or more?) old host names so that the service will continue to work in the meantime.
The CNAME costs you nothing, and while I agree that it should be able to be removed at some point in the future, having things not work at all in the short term is not the right approach.
It's also not realistic to expect folks to be able to chase this down on their own ... anyone familiar with using whois on the command line has most assuredly grown accustomed to the convenience of having it "just work," as it has for the last decade or so. While people certainly *can* go back to the "good old days" of having to hunt down each registry's whois server individually, it's hard to think of that as the best approach.
Is there some reason that the above can't be/hasn't been done that I'm missing?
Doug
On 03/09/2016 02:17 PM, Joseph Yee wrote:
Hi Doug,
Afilias had updated .PRO whois host in Jan 2016, and we filed the record to ICANN & IANA (http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/pro.html).
The new host is 'whois.afilias.net <http://whois.afilias.net>' and not 'whois.dotproregistry.net <http://whois.dotproregistry.net>' anymore.
Some operating systems may not update their whois configuration yet. You may need to check and update the configuration manually for PRO WHOIS server before official patch were available.
Best Regards, Joseph Yee Afilias
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 4:56 PM, Michael Flanagan <mflanagan@afilias.info <mailto:mflanagan@afilias.info>> wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Doug Barton [mailto:dougb@dougbarton.us <mailto:dougb@dougbarton.us>] Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2016 4:54 PM To: tld-admin-poc@afilias.info <mailto:tld-admin-poc@afilias.info>; tld-tech-poc@afilias.info <mailto:tld-tech-poc@afilias.info> Subject: [tld-admin-poc] Fwd: Re: .pro whois registry down?
FYI
-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: .pro whois registry down? Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 13:51:28 -0800 From: Doug Barton <dougb@dougbarton.us <mailto:dougb@dougbarton.us>> To: Bryan Holloway <bholloway@pavlovmedia.com <mailto:bholloway@pavlovmedia.com>>, NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org <mailto:nanog@nanog.org>>
On 03/09/2016 01:24 PM, Bryan Holloway wrote: > Anyone else noticing that the .pro TLD is failing for some things, and > their WHOIS registry appears to be unavailable?
The delegation from the root to PRO, and the PRO name servers themselves, seem to be working.
> I appear to be able to resolve, but whois times out, and we're getting > reports that mail isn't going through for some folks with this TLD.
The address records for whois.dotproregistry.net <http://whois.dotproregistry.net> are missing.
Doug
-- Mark Andrews, ISC 1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: marka@isc.org