
These installation instructions are for UNIX-based systems. I know that 
this program will run on NT using the ActiveState Windows port of Perl 
(www.activestate.com), altough I have little experience with that platform 
so I cannot write installation instructions for it. 

NOTE: In the following instructions directory paths are enclosed in 
square bracktes [thusly]. Don't type the brackets. 

  1.  Copy the file "whois" to a directory in your path, preferably 
      [/usr/local/bin] (if you have root access). (You may need to 
      remove [/usr/bin/whois] if you have an older whois client.)

  2.  Copy the man page (whois.1) to a directory in your man-path. 
      this file usually goes in [/usr/local/man/man1]. (You may need 
      to remove the file from [/usr/man/man1/whois.1] if there is 
      already a man page there for an older whois client.)

  3.  If you look up a lot of domains outside of .COM .NET and .ORG, 
      you will need the tld.conf file. This file is entirely optional. 
      The default location of this file is [/etc]. You can put it in a 
      different location if you set it in the BW_WHOIS environment 
      variable. See the man page for instructions. 

I have included a script that will do the above steps on a UNIX system. 
It's probably better to do the steps yourself, as I believe that you are 
never in control of your system if you do not know it's underpinnings 
well. The script is called [install.sh] and while it probably does no 
harm, you must run it as root so you must assume responsibility for 
running it. 

Enjoy.

--Bill Weinman, 11 April 2000

