How do I use the whois utility to find the email address of a user at another organization?

The whois utility is the Internet username directory service that you can use from a Unix computer. At Indiana University, you can use it on UITS Unix systems to look up users at other organizations. (To look up people at IU, use the IU Address Book; you can no longer use whois to find IU users.) For an online help message about whois, at the Unix prompt, enter:

To look up a user, you can try querying the whois server at the host where the user has an account. To do so, use the  -h  switch to specify a host:

Replace host with the name of the host which you are searching and name with the last name and the first name (separated by a comma) of the person for whom you are searching. For example, to specify the host whois.berkeley.edu, and the person John Doe, you would enter:

Note: Many Internet hosts do not have whois servers.

At Indiana University, for personal or departmental Linux or Unix systems support, see At IU, how do I get support for Linux or Unix?

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