> On 28 Aug 2026, at 23:25, Didier Kryn via Dng <dng@???> wrote:
>
> Le 28/08/2026 à 05:15, wirelessduck--- via Dng a écrit :
>> Hi,
>>
>> Can anyone shed some light on why the whois package contains a mkpasswd binary?
>>
>> The man page for mkpasswd says it’s a crypt(3) frontend, but I can’t see how that is relevant to whois.
>>
> apt-file search mkpasswd
>
> shows no other package containing that command, unless you want a perl version. The package probably contains several commands but don't ask me what the package naming rationale is, if any.
>

> --     Didier

Yeah it only contains `whois` and `mkpasswd`.

Did some searching on Debian BTS and found this old bug.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=526761

Seems like it’s there because the package author finds it useful and couldn’t be bothered moving it to another existing package.

:/

Upstream inetutils does provide a whois tool but this is not packaged in the Debian inetutils for whatever reason.

--
Tom