<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Hi Job,<br class=""><div><br class=""></div><div>this is due to a difference between the Whois Query service (port 43) and NRTM (port 4444).</div><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 28 Aug 2018, at 00:33, Job Snijders via db-wg <<a href="mailto:db-wg@ripe.net" class="">db-wg@ripe.net</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class="">Hi all,<br class=""><br class="">It appears there currently is no easy way to retrieve the current serial<br class="">from the RIPE DB. We're implementing some software to monitor whether<br class="">our local mirror is wildly out of sync with the RIPE DB or not.<br class=""><br class=""></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div><div class="">The current serial is only returned from the NRTM service (<a href="http://whois.ripe.net" class="">whois.ripe.net</a>:4444) by using the "-q sources" command.</div></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div class="">I kind of expected th serial to be listed in the --list-sources command,<br class="">but that field is set to 0.<br class=""><br class=""> hanna:~ job$ whois -h <a href="http://whois.ripe.net" class="">whois.ripe.net</a> -- --list-sources | grep RIPE<br class=""> % This is the RIPE Database query service.<br class=""> % The RIPE Database is subject to Terms and Conditions.<br class=""> RIPE:3:N:0-0<br class=""> RIPE-GRS:3:N:0-0<br class=""> % This query was served by the RIPE Database Query Service version 1.91.2 (HEREFORD)<br class=""><br class=""></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>The "--list-sources" or "-q sources" command on the Whois service (<a href="http://whois.ripe.net" class="">whois.ripe.net</a>:43) lists all the available sources, but with zero serial (as port 43 is not used for mirroring).</div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div class="">In comparison, IRRd will display the current serial when the !j query is<br class="">issued:<br class=""><br class=""> hanna:~ job$ whois -h <a href="http://rr.ntt.net" class="">rr.ntt.net</a> -- '!jNTTCOM'<br class=""> A25<br class=""> NTTCOM:N:0-978492:978492<br class=""> C<br class=""> hanna:~ job$<br class=""><br class="">I came up with a really ugly oneliner:<br class=""><br class=""> $ whois -h 193.0.6.135 -p 4444 -- \<br class=""> "-g RIPE:3:$(curl -s <a href="https://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/RIPE.CURRENTSERIAL" class="">https://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/RIPE.CURRENTSERIAL</a>)-LAST" | \<br class=""> grep -v : | sed '/^$/d' | tail -n 2 | head -1 | awk '{ print $NF }'<br class=""> 42486238 <br class=""><br class="">Depending on the time of day that oneliner may be quite quick, or take<br class="">several minutes to complete... obviously not ideal.<br class=""><br class="">Can --list-sources perhaps be improved to list the current serial?<br class=""><br class="">Kind regards,<br class=""><br class="">Job<br class=""><br class=""></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""><div class="">Regards</div><div class="">Ed Shryane</div><div class="">RIPE NCC</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>