2 ngIRCd - Next Generation IRC Server
3 http://ngircd.barton.de/
5 (c)2001-2014 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 22.x
17 - The default value of the SSL "CipherList" variable has been changed to
18 "HIGH:!aNULL:@STRENGTH:!SSLv3" (OpenSSL) and "SECURE128:-VERS-SSL3.0"
19 (GnuTLS) to disable the old SSLv3 protocol by default.
20 To enable connections of clients still requiring the weak SSLv3 protocol,
21 the "CipherList" must be set to its old value (not recommended!), which
22 was "HIGH:!aNULL:@STRENGTH" (OpenSSL) and "SECURE128" (GnuTLS), see below.
24 Differences to version 20.x
26 - Starting with ngIRCd 21, the ciphers used by SSL are configurable and
27 default to "HIGH:!aNULL:@STRENGTH" (OpenSSL) or "SECURE128" (GnuTLS).
28 Previous version were using the OpenSSL or GnuTLS defaults, "DEFAULT"
29 and "NORMAL" respectively.
31 - When adding GLINE's or KLINE's to ngIRCd 21 (or newer), all clients matching
32 the new mask will be KILL'ed. This was not the case with earlier versions
33 that only added the mask but didn't kill already connected users.
35 Differences to version 19.x
37 - Starting with ngIRCd 20, users can "cloak" their hostname only when the
38 configuration variable "CloakHostModeX" (introduced in 19.2) is set.
39 Otherwise, only IRC operators, other servers, and services are allowed to
40 set mode +x. This prevents regular users from changing their hostmask to
41 the name of the IRC server itself, which confused quite a few people ;-)
43 Differences to version 17
45 - Support for ZeroConf/Bonjour/Rendezvous service registration has been
46 removed. The configuration option "NoZeroconf" is no longer available.
48 - The structure of ngircd.conf has been cleaned up and three new configuration
49 sections have been introduced: [Limits], [Options], and [SSL].
50 Lots of configuration variables stored in the [Global] section are now
51 deprecated there and should be stored in one of these new sections (but
52 still work in [Global]):
53 "AllowRemoteOper" -> [Options]
54 "ChrootDir" -> [Options]
55 "ConnectIPv4" -> [Options]
56 "ConnectIPv6" -> [Options]
57 "ConnectRetry" -> [Limits]
58 "MaxConnections" -> [Limits]
59 "MaxConnectionsIP" -> [Limits]
60 "MaxJoins" -> [Limits]
61 "MaxNickLength" -> [Limits]
62 "NoDNS" -> [Options], and renamed to "DNS"
63 "NoIdent" -> [Options], and renamed to "Ident"
64 "NoPAM" -> [Options], and renamed to "PAM"
65 "OperCanUseMode" -> [Options]
66 "OperServerMode" -> [Options]
67 "PingTimeout" -> [Limits]
68 "PongTimeout" -> [Limits]
69 "PredefChannelsOnly" -> [Options]
70 "SSLCertFile" -> [SSL], and renamed to "CertFile"
71 "SSLDHFile" -> [SSL], and renamed to "DHFile"
72 "SSLKeyFile" -> [SSL], and renamed to "KeyFile"
73 "SSLKeyFilePassword" -> [SSL], and renamed to "KeyFilePassword"
74 "SSLPorts" -> [SSL], and renamed to "Ports"
75 "SyslogFacility" -> [Options]
76 "WebircPassword" -> [Options]
77 You should adjust your ngircd.conf and run "ngircd --configtest" to make
78 sure that your settings are correct and up to date!
80 Differences to version 16
82 - Changes to the "MotdFile" specified in ngircd.conf now require a ngircd
83 configuration reload to take effect (HUP signal, REHASH command).
85 Differences to version 0.9.x
87 - The option of the configure script to enable support for Zeroconf/Bonjour/
88 Rendezvous/WhateverItIsNamedToday has been renamed:
89 --with-rendezvous -> --with-zeroconf
91 Differences to version 0.8.x
93 - The maximum length of passwords has been raised to 20 characters (instead
94 of 8 characters). If your passwords are longer than 8 characters then they
95 are cut at an other position now.
97 Differences to version 0.6.x
99 - Some options of the configure script have been renamed:
100 --disable-syslog -> --without-syslog
101 --disable-zlib -> --without-zlib
102 Please call "./configure --help" to review the full list of options!
104 Differences to version 0.5.x
106 - Starting with version 0.6.0, other servers are identified using asynchronous
107 passwords: therefore the variable "Password" in [Server]-sections has been
108 replaced by "MyPassword" and "PeerPassword".
110 - New configuration variables, section [Global]: MaxConnections, MaxJoins
111 (see example configuration file "doc/sample-ngircd.conf"!).
114 II. Standard Installation
115 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
117 ngIRCd is developed for UNIX-based systems, which means that the installation
118 on modern UNIX-like systems that are supported by GNU autoconf and GNU
119 automake ("configure") should be no problem.
121 The normal installation procedure after getting (and expanding) the source
122 files (using a distribution archive or GIT) is as following:
124 0) Satisfy prerequisites
125 1) ./autogen.sh [only necessary when using GIT]
130 (Please see details below!)
132 Now the newly compiled executable "ngircd" is installed in its standard
133 location, /usr/local/sbin/.
135 The next step is to configure and afterwards starting the daemon. Please
136 have a look at the ngircd(8) and ngircd.conf(5) manual pages for details
137 and all possible options -- and don't forget to run "ngircd --configtest"
138 to validate your configuration file!
140 If no previous version of the configuration file exists (the standard name
141 is /usr/local/etc/ngircd.conf), a sample configuration file containing all
142 possible options will be installed there. You'll find its template in the
143 doc/ directory: sample-ngircd.conf.
146 0): Satisfy prerequisites
148 When building from source, you'll need some other software to build ngIRCd:
149 for example a working C compiler, make tool, GNU automake and autoconf (only
150 when not using a distribution archive), and a few libraries depending on the
151 features you want to compile in (like IDENT support, SSL, and PAM).
153 If you are using one of the "big" operating systems or Linux distributions,
154 you can use the following commands to install all the required packages to
155 build the sources including all optional features and to run the test suite:
157 * RedHat / Fedora based distributions:
160 autoconf automake expect gcc glibc-devel gnutls-devel \
161 libident-devel make pam-devel tcp_wrappers-devel telnet zlib-devel
163 * Debian / Ubuntu based distributions:
166 autoconf automake build-essential expect libgnutls-dev \
167 libident-dev libpam-dev libwrap0-dev libz-dev telnet
172 The first step, autogen.sh, is only necessary if the configure-script isn't
173 already generated. This never happens in official ("stable") releases in
174 tar.gz-archives, but when using GIT.
176 This step is therefore only interesting for developers.
178 autogen.sh produces the Makefile.in's, which are necessary for the configure
179 script itself, and some more files for make. To run autogen.sh you'll need
180 GNU autoconf and GNU automake: at least autoconf 2.61 and automake 1.10 are
181 requird, newer is better. But don't use automake 1.12 or newer for creating
182 distribution archives: it will work but lack "de-ANSI-fication" support in the
183 generated Makefile's! Stick with automake 1.11.x for this purpose ...
184 So automake 1.11.x and autoconf 2.67+ is recommended.
186 Again: "end users" do not need this step and neither need GNU autoconf nor GNU
192 The configure-script is used to detect local system dependencies.
194 In the perfect case, configure should recognize all needed libraries, header
195 files and so on. If this shouldn't work, "./configure --help" shows all
198 In addition, you can pass some command line options to "configure" to enable
199 and/or disable some features of ngIRCd. All these options are shown using
200 "./configure --help", too.
202 Compiling a static binary will avoid you the hassle of feeding a chroot dir
203 (if you want use the chroot feature). Just do something like:
204 CFLAGS=-static ./configure [--your-options ...]
205 Then you can use a void directory as ChrootDir (like OpenSSH's /var/empty).
210 The make command uses the Makefiles produced by configure and compiles the
216 Use "make install" to install the server and a sample configuration file on
217 the local system. Normally, root privileges are necessary to complete this
218 step. If there is already an older configuration file present, it won't be
221 These files and folders will be installed by default:
223 - /usr/local/sbin/ngircd: executable server
224 - /usr/local/etc/ngircd.conf: sample configuration (if not already present)
225 - /usr/local/share/doc/ngircd/: documentation
226 - /usr/local/share/man/: manual pages
229 III. Additional features
230 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
232 The following optional features can be compiled into the daemon by passing
233 options to the "configure" script. Most options can handle a <path> argument
234 which will be used to search for the required libraries and header files in
235 the given paths ("<path>/lib/...", "<path>/include/...") in addition to the
238 * Syslog Logging (autodetected by default):
239 --with-syslog[=<path>] / --without-syslog
241 Enable (disable) support for logging to "syslog", which should be
242 available on most modern UNIX-like operating systems by default.
244 * ZLib Compression (autodetected by default):
245 --with-zlib[=<path>] / --without-zlib
247 Enable (disable) support for compressed server-server links.
248 The Z compression library ("libz") is required for this option.
250 * IO Backend (autodetected by default):
251 --with-select[=<path>] / --without-select
252 --with-poll[=<path>] / --without-poll
253 --with-devpoll[=<path>] / --without-devpoll
254 --with-epoll[=<path>] / --without-epoll
255 --with-kqueue[=<path>] / --without-kqueue
257 ngIRCd can use different IO "backends": the "old school" select() and poll()
258 API which should be supported by most UNIX-like operating systems, or the
259 more efficient and flexible epoll() (Linux >=2.6), kqueue() (BSD) and
261 By default the IO backend is autodetected, but you can use "--without-xxx"
262 to disable a more enhanced API.
263 When using the epoll() API, support for select() is compiled in as well by
264 default to enable the binary to run on older Linux kernels (<2.6), too.
267 --with-ident[=<path>]
269 Include support for IDENT ("AUTH") lookups. The "ident" library is
270 required for this option.
273 --with-tcp-wrappers[=<path>]
275 Include support for Wietse Venemas "TCP Wrappers" to limit client access
276 to the daemon, for example by using "/etc/hosts.{allow|deny}".
277 The "libwrap" is required for this option.
282 Enable support for PAM, the Pluggable Authentication Modules library.
283 See doc/PAM.txt for details.
286 --with-openssl[=<path>]
287 --with-gnutls[=<path>]
289 Enable support for SSL/TLS using OpenSSL or gnutls libraries.
290 See doc/SSL.txt for details.
295 Adds support for version 6 of the Internet Protocol.
298 IV. Useful make-targets
299 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
301 The Makefile produced by the configure-script contains always these useful
304 - clean: delete every product from the compiler/linker
307 - distclean: the above plus erase all generated Makefiles
308 next step: -> ./configure
310 - maintainer-clean: erase all automatic generated files
311 next step: -> ./autogen.sh
314 V. Sample configuration file ngircd.conf
315 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
317 In the sample configuration file, there are comments beginning with "#" OR
318 ";" -- this is only for the better understanding of the file.
320 The file is separated in five blocks: [Global], [Features], [Operator],
321 [Server], and [Channel].
323 In the [Global] section, there is the main configuration like the server
324 name and the ports, on which the server should be listening. Options in
325 the [Features] section enable or disable functionality in the daemon.
326 IRC operators of this server are defined in [Operator] blocks, remote
327 servers are configured in [Server] sections, and [Channel] blocks are
328 used to configure pre-defined ("persistent") IRC channels.
330 The meaning of the variables in the configuration file is explained in the
331 "doc/sample-ngircd.conf", which is used as sample configuration file in
332 /usr/local/etc after running "make install" (if you don't already have one)
333 and in the ngircd.conf(5) manual page.
336 VI. Command line options
337 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
339 These parameters could be passed to the ngIRCd:
342 The daemon uses the file <file> as configuration file rather than
343 the standard configuration /usr/local/etc/ngircd.conf.
346 ngIRCd should be running as a foreground process.
349 Server-links won't be automatically established.
352 Reads, validates and dumps the configuration file as interpreted
353 by the server. Then exits.
355 Use "--help" to see a short help text describing all available parameters
356 the server understands, with "--version" the ngIRCd shows its version
357 number. In both cases the server exits after the output.
359 Please see the ngircd(8) manual page for complete details!