"whois -h tools at xxx.net" ?

Laurent Joncheray (lpj at merit.edu) on March 27:
> 	Cool!... I'd really like to be able to do something like...
> 
> 	whois -h whois.ra.net 'echo + > /etc/hosts.equiv'
> 
> 	huh huh...
> 			-- The Cracker

You wish Mr. Cracker. The server will run these programs with uid
other than root:-)

> 
> 
> In our previous episode, Dale S. Johnson said:
> > 
> > All,
> > 
> >   One of the impromptu things that turned out to be useful under the PRDB
> > was the ability to put up ad-hoc tools under the whois server.  Steve
> > Richardson wrote a lovely server that lets you type:
> > 
> >               whois -h prdb.merit.edu 'aggis 35/8'
> > 
> > to run "aggis" on "35/8", as well as doing more complicated things.  The
> > programs and reports are also available by other methods (ftp, www), but
> > whois turns out to be nice in that you walk a naive user through it over
> > the phone in a few seconds, without requiring that they bring a program
> > over and install it, install perl, etc.
> > 
> >   I'd like to replicate this kind of functionality for the RA, and it 
> > would be even nicer if we did this in a way that everyone liked so that
> > it became a normal IRR feature.
> > 
> >   Which leads to the following questions:
> > 
> >   1) Does this service look useful to anyone else?
> > 
> >   2) Is there a clean way to tie this into the RIPE-distribution whoisd?
> > We would need to distringuish whoisd queries from the other ones that need
> > to be passed to local programs.  Would any the following algorithm work:
> > 
> >      - Anything with a space in it ("aggis 35/8") is a special program?
> >           [But some queries can potentially allow spaces, no?]
> >      - Anything in a list of key names is a special program?  
> >           [But then this name space can overlap with, e.g., maintainer
> >            or community names and cause conflicts]
> >      - Anything sent to a totally separate whois server (whois -h
> >          tools.XXXX.net) is a separate program.  [Counter-intuitive;
> > 	 folks will always be making mistakes].  [Or:  make it
> > 
> > 		 finger "aggis 35/8"@finger.XXX.net   
> > 	?]
> > 
> > (Our version looks for the first token on /usr/local/whois.bin;  if it
> > is there, run that as a program passing the rest of the string as 
> > parameters).
> > 
> >   3) Are folks willing to have the front-end of this be part of the 
> > standard IRR software?
> > 
> > --Dale
> > 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Laurent Joncheray,                                  E-Mail: lpj at merit.edu
>     Merit Network Inc, 4251 Plymouth Rd, Suite C,   Phone:  +1 (313) 936 2065
>     Ann Arbor, MI 48105, USA                        Fax:    +1 (313) 747 3185
> "This is the end, Beautiful friend. This is the end, My only friend, the end" JM


Cengiz

-- 
Cengiz Alaettinoglu       Information Sciences Institute
(310) 822-1511            University of Southern California
http://www.isi.edu/div7/people/cengiz.home



-------- Logged at  Mon Mar 27 23:21:37 MET DST 1995  ---------