2 ngIRCd - Next Generation IRC Server
3 http://ngircd.barton.de/
5 (c)2001-2013 Alexander Barton and Contributors.
6 ngIRCd is free software and published under the
7 terms of the GNU General Public License.
12 I. Upgrade Information
13 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
15 Differences to version 19.x
17 - Starting with ngIRCd 20, users can "cloak" their hostname only when the
18 configuration variable "CloakHostModeX" (introduced in 19.2) is set.
19 Otherwise, only IRC opertators, other servers, and services are allowed to
20 set mode +x. This prevents regular users from changing their hostmask to
21 the name of the IRC server itself, which confused quite a few people ;-)
23 Differences to version 17
25 - Support for ZeroConf/Bonjour/Rendezvous service registration has been
26 removed. The configuration option "NoZeroconf" is no longer available.
28 - The structure of ngircd.conf has been cleaned up and three new configuration
29 sections have been introduced: [Limits], [Options], and [SSL].
30 Lots of configuration variables stored in the [Global] section are now
31 deprecated there and should be stored in one of these new sections (but
32 still work in [Global]):
33 "AllowRemoteOper" -> [Options]
34 "ChrootDir" -> [Options]
35 "ConnectIPv4" -> [Options]
36 "ConnectIPv6" -> [Options]
37 "ConnectRetry" -> [Limits]
38 "MaxConnections" -> [Limits]
39 "MaxConnectionsIP" -> [Limits]
40 "MaxJoins" -> [Limits]
41 "MaxNickLength" -> [Limits]
42 "NoDNS" -> [Options], and renamed to "DNS"
43 "NoIdent" -> [Options], and renamed to "Ident"
44 "NoPAM" -> [Options], and renamed to "PAM"
45 "OperCanUseMode" -> [Options]
46 "OperServerMode" -> [Options]
47 "PingTimeout" -> [Limits]
48 "PongTimeout" -> [Limits]
49 "PredefChannelsOnly" -> [Options]
50 "SSLCertFile" -> [SSL], and renamed to "CertFile"
51 "SSLDHFile" -> [SSL], and renamed to "DHFile"
52 "SSLKeyFile" -> [SSL], and renamed to "KeyFile"
53 "SSLKeyFilePassword" -> [SSL], and renamed to "KeyFilePassword"
54 "SSLPorts" -> [SSL], and renamed to "Ports"
55 "SyslogFacility" -> [Options]
56 "WebircPassword" -> [Options]
57 You should adjust your ngircd.conf and run "ngircd --configtest" to make
58 sure that your settings are correct and up to date!
60 Differences to version 16
62 - Changes to the "MotdFile" specified in ngircd.conf now require a ngircd
63 configuration reload to take effect (HUP signal, REHASH command).
65 Differences to version 0.9.x
67 - The option of the configure script to enable support for Zeroconf/Bonjour/
68 Rendezvous/WhateverItIsNamedToday has been renamed:
69 --with-rendezvous -> --with-zeroconf
71 Differences to version 0.8.x
73 - The maximum length of passwords has been raised to 20 characters (instead
74 of 8 characters). If your passwords are longer than 8 characters then they
75 are cut at an other position now.
77 Differences to version 0.6.x
79 - Some options of the configure script have been renamed:
80 --disable-syslog -> --without-syslog
81 --disable-zlib -> --without-zlib
82 Please call "./configure --help" to review the full list of options!
84 Differences to version 0.5.x
86 - Starting with version 0.6.0, other servers are identified using asynchronous
87 passwords: therefore the variable "Password" in [Server]-sections has been
88 replaced by "MyPassword" and "PeerPassword".
90 - New configuration variables, section [Global]: MaxConnections, MaxJoins
91 (see example configuration file "doc/sample-ngircd.conf"!).
94 II. Standard Installation
95 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
97 ngIRCd is developed for UNIX-based systems, which means that the installation
98 on modern UNIX-like systems that are supported by GNU autoconf and GNU
99 automake ("configure") should be no problem.
101 The normal installation procedure after getting (and expanding) the source
102 files (using a distribution archive or GIT) is as following:
104 0) Satisfy prerequisites
105 1) ./autogen.sh [only necessary when using GIT]
110 (Please see details below!)
112 Now the newly compiled executable "ngircd" is installed in its standard
113 location, /usr/local/sbin/.
115 The next step is to configure and afterwards starting the daemon. Please
116 have a look at the ngircd(8) and ngircd.conf(5) manual pages for details
117 and all possible options -- and don't forget to run "ngircd --configtest"
118 to validate your configuration file!
120 If no previous version of the configuration file exists (the standard name
121 is /usr/local/etc/ngircd.conf), a sample configuration file containing all
122 possible options will be installed there. You'll find its template in the
123 doc/ directory: sample-ngircd.conf.
126 0): Satisfy prerequisites
128 When building from source, you'll need some other software to build ngIRCd:
129 for example a working C compiler, make tool, GNU automake and autoconf (only
130 when not using a distribution archive), and a few libraries depending on the
131 features you want to compile in (like IDENT support, SSL, and PAM).
133 If you are using one of the "big" operating systems or Linux distributions,
134 you can use the following commands to install all the required packages to
135 build the sources including all optional features and to run the test suite:
137 * RedHat / Fedora based distributions:
140 autoconf automake expect gcc glibc-devel gnutls-devel \
141 libident-devel make pam-devel tcp_wrappers-devel telnet zlib-devel
143 * Debian / Ubuntu based distributions:
146 autoconf automake build-essential expect libgnutls-dev \
147 libident-dev libpam-dev libwrap0-dev libz-dev telnet
152 The first step, autogen.sh, is only necessary if the configure-script isn't
153 already generated. This never happens in official ("stable") releases in
154 tar.gz-archives, but when using GIT.
156 This step is therefore only interesting for developers.
158 autogen.sh produces the Makefile.in's, which are necessary for the configure
159 script itself, and some more files for make. To run autogen.sh you'll need
160 GNU autoconf and GNU automake: at least autoconf 2.61 and automake 1.10 are
161 requird, newer is better. But don't use automake 1.12 or newer for creating
162 distribution archives: it will work but lack "de-ANSI-fucation" support in the
163 generated Makefile's! Stick with automake 1.11.x for this purpose ...
164 So automake 1.11.x and autoconf 2.67+ is recommended.
166 Again: "end users" do not need this step and neither need GNU autoconf nor GNU
172 The configure-script is used to detect local system dependencies.
174 In the perfect case, configure should recognize all needed libraries, header
175 files and so on. If this shouldn't work, "./configure --help" shows all
178 In addition, you can pass some command line options to "configure" to enable
179 and/or disable some features of ngIRCd. All these options are shown using
180 "./configure --help", too.
182 Compiling a static binary will avoid you the hassle of feeding a chroot dir
183 (if you want use the chroot feature). Just do something like:
184 CFLAGS=-static ./configure [--your-options ...]
185 Then you can use a void directory as ChrootDir (like OpenSSH's /var/empty).
190 The make command uses the Makefiles produced by configure and compiles the
196 Use "make install" to install the server and a sample configuration file on
197 the local system. Normally, root privileges are necessary to complete this
198 step. If there is already an older configuration file present, it won't be
201 These files and folders will be installed by default:
203 - /usr/local/sbin/ngircd: executable server
204 - /usr/local/etc/ngircd.conf: sample configuration (if not already present)
205 - /usr/local/share/doc/ngircd/: documentation
206 - /usr/local/share/man/: manual pages
209 III. Additional features
210 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
212 The following optional features can be compiled into the daemon by passing
213 options to the "configure" script. Most options can handle a <path> argument
214 which will be used to search for the required libraries and header files in
215 the given paths ("<path>/lib/...", "<path>/include/...") in addition to the
218 * Syslog Logging (autodetected by default):
219 --with-syslog[=<path>] / --without-syslog
221 Enable (disable) support for logging to "syslog", which should be
222 available on most modern UNIX-like operating systems by default.
224 * ZLib Compression (autodetected by default):
225 --with-zlib[=<path>] / --without-zlib
227 Enable (disable) support for compressed server-server links.
228 The Z compression library ("libz") is required for this option.
230 * IO Backend (autodetected by default):
231 --with-select[=<path>] / --without-select
232 --with-poll[=<path>] / --without-poll
233 --with-devpoll[=<path>] / --without-devpoll
234 --with-epoll[=<path>] / --without-epoll
235 --with-kqueue[=<path>] / --without-kqueue
237 ngIRCd can use different IO "backends": the "old school" select() and poll()
238 API which should be supported by most UNIX-like operating systems, or the
239 more efficient and flexible epoll() (Linux >=2.6), kqueue() (BSD) and
241 By default the IO backend is autodetected, but you can use "--without-xxx"
242 to disable a more enhanced API.
243 When using the epoll() API, support for select() is compiled in as well by
244 default to enable the binary to run on older Linux kernels (<2.6), too.
247 --with-ident[=<path>]
249 Include support for IDENT ("AUTH") lookups. The "ident" library is
250 required for this option.
253 --with-tcp-wrappers[=<path>]
255 Include support for Wietse Venemas "TCP Wrappers" to limit client access
256 to the daemon, for example by using "/etc/hosts.{allow|deny}".
257 The "libwrap" is required for this option.
262 Enable support for PAM, the Pluggable Authentication Modules library.
263 See doc/PAM.txt for details.
266 --with-openssl[=<path>]
267 --with-gnutls[=<path>]
269 Enable support for SSL/TLS using OpenSSL or gnutls libraries.
270 See doc/SSL.txt for details.
275 Adds support for version 6 of the Internet Protocol.
278 IV. Useful make-targets
279 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
281 The Makefile produced by the configure-script contains always these useful
284 - clean: delete every product from the compiler/linker
287 - distclean: the above plus erase all generated Makefiles
288 next step: -> ./configure
290 - maintainer-clean: erase all automatic generated files
291 next step: -> ./autogen.sh
294 V. Sample configuration file ngircd.conf
295 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
297 In the sample configuration file, there are comments beginning with "#" OR
298 ";" -- this is only for the better understanding of the file.
300 The file is separated in five blocks: [Global], [Features], [Operator],
301 [Server], and [Channel].
303 In the [Global] section, there is the main configuration like the server
304 name and the ports, on which the server should be listening. Options in
305 the [Features] section enable or disable functionality in the daemon.
306 IRC operators of this server are defined in [Operator] blocks, remote
307 servers are configured in [Server] sections, and [Channel] blocks are
308 used to configure pre-defined ("persistent") IRC channels.
310 The meaning of the variables in the configuration file is explained in the
311 "doc/sample-ngircd.conf", which is used as sample configuration file in
312 /usr/local/etc after running "make install" (if you don't already have one)
313 and in the ngircd.conf(5) manual page.
316 VI. Command line options
317 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
319 These parameters could be passed to the ngIRCd:
322 The daemon uses the file <file> as configuration file rather than
323 the standard configuration /usr/local/etc/ngircd.conf.
326 ngIRCd should be running as a foreground process.
329 Server-links won't be automatically established.
332 Reads, validates and dumps the configuration file as interpreted
333 by the server. Then exits.
335 Use "--help" to see a short help text describing all available parameters
336 the server understands, with "--version" the ngIRCd shows its version
337 number. In both cases the server exits after the output.
339 Please see the ngircd(8) manual page for complete details!