How to install whois on RHEL 8 / CentOS 8

How to install whois on RHEL 8

Procedure to install whois as follows on a CentOS/RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) version 8:

1. Open the terminal app on CentOS 8. For remote RHEL 8 server login using ssh user@server-ip-here command
2. Enable EPEL repo on CentOS 8 (see how to enable EPEL repo on RHEL 8). :
3. Install whois client, execute: sudo yum install whois
4. Test it: whois public-ipv4-here OR whois cyberciti.biz

Let us see all examples and commands in details.

Update: We can install the whois client on the latest version of CentOS or RHEL 8 without using the EPEL repo. So all you have to do is type:
sudo yum install whois
OR
sudo dnf install whois

Install whois on a CentOS 8 Linux box

Turn on EPEL repo on CentOS 8, run the following yum commands:
sudo yum install epel-release
sudo yum config-manager --set-enabled PowerTools
sudo yum repolist

Search for the package:
sudo yum search whois
Sample outputs:

Last metadata expiration check: 0:49:29 ago on Mon Nov 23 11:43:58 2020.
Available Packages
Name         : whois
Version      : 5.5.1
Release      : 2.el8
Architecture : x86_64
Size         : 78 k
Source       : whois-5.5.1-2.el8.src.rpm
Repository   : AppStream
Summary      : Improved WHOIS client
URL          : http://www.linux.it/~md/software/
License      : GPLv2+
Description  : Searches for an object in a RFC 3912 database.
             : 
             : This version of the WHOIS client tries to guess the right server to ask for
             : the specified object. If no guess can be made it will connect to
             : whois.networksolutions.com for NIC handles or whois.arin.net for IPv4
             : addresses and network names.

Let us install whois client:
sudo yum install whois
Sample outputs:

Last metadata expiration check: 1:34:15 ago on Tuesday 01 October 2019 05:36:22 PM UTC.
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package            Arch            Version                 Repository     Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 whois              x86_64          5.5.1-1.el8             epel           77 k
Installing dependencies:
 whois-nls          noarch          5.5.1-1.el8             epel           37 k
 
Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  2 Packages
 
Total download size: 114 k
Installed size: 343 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
(1/2): whois-nls-5.5.1-1.el8.noarch.rpm         362 kB/s |  37 kB     00:00    
(2/2): whois-5.5.1-1.el8.x86_64.rpm             744 kB/s |  77 kB     00:00    
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                            65 kB/s | 114 kB     00:01     
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
  Preparing        :                                                        1/1 
  Installing       : whois-nls-5.5.1-1.el8.noarch                           1/2 
  Installing       : whois-5.5.1-1.el8.x86_64                               2/2 
  Running scriptlet: whois-5.5.1-1.el8.x86_64                               2/2 
  Verifying        : whois-5.5.1-1.el8.x86_64                               1/2 
  Verifying        : whois-nls-5.5.1-1.el8.noarch                           2/2 
 
Installed:
  whois-5.5.1-1.el8.x86_64             whois-nls-5.5.1-1.el8.noarch            
 
Complete!

Installing whois on an RHEL 8 Linux server

First enable on EPEL repo on RHEL 8, execute the following commands:
$ sudo yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
$ sudo subscription-manager repos --enable "codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-*-rpms"
$ sudo yum repolist

Install it:
sudo yum search whois
sudo yum install whois

How do I use whois client?

whois is a useful command for Linux and Unix users if you want to find out the following info:

• Find out the names of the DNS servers for a domain
• Obtain the name of the administrative contact for a domain including the name of a company or organization whose domain name you know
• Contact IP or domain owner to report abuse or misconfiguration issues and more.

The syntax is:
whois IP-address
whois domain-name
whois [options] objects
whois cyberciti.biz
whois 69.164.200.202

Conclusion

You learned how to install whois client on a CentOS or RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) version 8 server. See whois command examples.