The "next generation" irc daemon
ngircd [ Options ]
ngIRCd is a free, portable and lightweight Internet Relay Chat server for small or private networks, developed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It is easy to configure, can cope with dynamic IP addresses, and supports IPv6, SSL-protected connections as well as PAM for authentication. It is written from scratch and not based on the original IRCd.
The name ngIRCd means next generation IRC daemon, which is a little bit exaggerated: lightweight Internet Relay Chat server most probably would have been a better name :-)
Currently supported platforms include AIX, A/UX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Hurd, IRIX, Linux, Mac OS X, Minix, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, and Windows with Cygwin. As ngIRCd relies on UNIX standards and uses GNU automake and GNU autoconf there are good chances that it also supports other UNIX-based operating systems as well.
By default ngIRCd logs diagnostic and informational messages using the syslog mechanism, or writes directly to the console when running in the foreground (see below).
The default behavior of ngircd is to read its standard configuration file (see below), to detach from the controlling terminal and to wait for clients.
You can use these options to modify this default:
-f file, --config file
Use file as configuration file.
-n, --nodaemon
Don't fork a child and don't detach from controlling terminal. All log messages go to the console and you can use CTRL-C to terminate the server.
-p, --passive
Disable automatic connections to other servers. You can use the IRC command CONNECT later on as IRC Operator to link this ngIRCd to other servers.
-t, --configtest
Read, validate and display the configuration; then exit.
-V, --version
Output version information and exit.
-h, --help
Display a brief help text and exit.
/etc/ngircd/ngircd.conf
The system wide default configuration file.
/etc/ngircd/ngircd.motd
Default "message of the day" (MOTD).
The daemon understands the following signals:
TERM
Shut down all connections and terminate the daemon.
HUP
Shut down all listening sockets, re-read the configuration file and re-initialize the daemon.
It's wise to use "ngircd --configtest" to validate the configuration file after changing it.
When ngIRCd is compiled with debug code, that is, its source code has been ./configure'd with "--enable-debug" and/or "--enable-sniffer" (witch enables debug mode automatically as well), you can use two more command line options and two more signals to debug problems with the daemon itself or IRC clients:
Options:
-d, --debug
Enable debug mode and log extra messages.
-s, --sniffer
Enable IRC protocol sniffer, which logs all sent and received IRC commands to the console/syslog. This option requires that ngIRCd has been ./configure'd with "--enable-sniffer" and enables debug mode automatically, too.
Signals:
USR1
Toggle debug mode on and off during runtime.
USR2
Dump internal server state to the console/syslog when debug mode is on (use command line option --debug or signal USR1).
Alexander Barton, <[email protected]>
Florian Westphal, <[email protected]>
Homepage: http://ngircd.barton.de/