ngIRCd - Next Generation IRC Server (c)2001-2004 by Alexander Barton, alex@barton.de, http://www.barton.de/ ngIRCd is free software and published under the terms of the GNU General Public License. -- INSTALL -- I. Upgrade Information ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Differences to version 0.8.x - The maximum length of passwords has been raised to 20 characters (instead of 8 characters). If your passwords are longer than 8 characters then they are cut at an other position now. Differences to version 0.6.x - Some options of the configure script have been renamed: --disable-syslog -> --without-syslog --disable-zlib -> --without-zlib Please call "./configure --help" to review the full list of options! Differences to version 0.5.x - Starting with version 0.6.0, other servers are identified using asynchronous passwords: therefore the variable "Password" in [Server]-sections has been replaced by "MyPassword" and "PeerPassword". - New configuration variables, section [Global]: MaxConnections, MaxJoins (see example configuration file "doc/sample-ngircd.conf"!). II. Standard Installation ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ngIRCd is developed for UNIX-based systems, which means that the installation on modern UNIX-like systems that are supported by GNU autoconf and GNU automake ("configure") should be no problem. The normal installation procedure after getting (and expanding) the source files (using a distribution archive or CVS) is as following: 1) ./autogen.sh [only necessary when using CVS] 2) ./configure 3) make 4) make install (Please see details below!) Now the newly compiled executable "ngircd" is installed in its standard location, /usr/local/sbin/. The next step is to configure and afterwards starting the daemon. Please have a look at the ngircd(8) and ngircd.conf(5) manual pages for details and all possible options. If no previous version of the configuration file exists (the standard name is /usr/local/etc/ngircd.conf), a sample configuration file containing all possible options will be installed there. You'll find its template in the doc/ directory: sample-ngircd.conf. 1): "autogen.sh" The first step, autogen.sh, is only necessary if the configure-script isn't already generated. This never happens in official ("stable") releases in tar.gz-archives, but when using CVS. This step is therefore only interesting for developers. autogen.sh produces the Makefile.in's, which are necessary for the configure script itself, and some more files for make. To run autogen.sh you'll need GNU autoconf and GNU automake (use recent versions! autoconf 2.53 and automake 1.6.1 are known to work). Again: "end users" do not need this step! 2): "./configure" The configure-script is used to detect local system dependencies. In the perfect case, configure should recognise all needed libraries, header files and so on. If this shouldn't work, "./configure --help" shows all possible options. In addition, you can pass some command line options to "configure" to enable and/or disable some features of ngIRCd. All these options are shown using "./configure --help", too. Compiling a static binary will avoid you the hassle of feeding a chroot dir (if you want use the chroot feature). Just do something like: CFLAGS=-static ./configure [--your-options ...] Then you can use a void directory as ChrootDir (like OpenSSH's /var/empty). 3): "make" The make command uses the Makefiles produced by configure and compiles the ngIRCd daemon. 4): "make install" Use "make install" to install the server and a sample configuration file on the local system. Normally, root privileges are necessary to complete this step. If there is already an older configuration file present, it won't be overwritten. This files will be installed by default: - /usr/local/sbin/ngircd: executable server - /usr/local/etc/ngircd.conf: sample configuration (if not already present) - /usr/local/share/doc/ngircd/: documentation II. Useful make-targets ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Makefile produced by the configure-script contains always these useful targets: - clean: delete every product from the compiler/linker next step: -> make - distclean: the above plus erase all generated Makefiles next step: -> ./configure - maintainer-clean: erase all automatic generated files next step: -> ./autogen.sh III. Sample configuration file ngircd.conf ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In the sample configuration file, there are comments beginning with "#" OR ";" -- this is only for the better understanding of the file. The file is separated in four blocks: [Global], [Operator], [Server], and [Channel]. In the [Global] section, there is the main configuration like the server name and the ports, on which the server should be listening. IRC operators of this server are defined in [Operator] blocks. [Server] is the section where server links are configured. And [Channel] blocks are used to configure pre-defined ("persistent") IRC channels. The meaning of the variables in the configuration file is explained in the "doc/sample-ngircd.conf", which is used as sample configuration file in /usr/local/etc after running "make install" (if you don't already have one) and in the "ngircd.conf" manual page. IV. Command line options ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These parameters could be passed to the ngIRCd: -f, --config The daemon uses the file as configuration file rather than the standard configuration /usr/local/etc/ngircd.conf. -n, --nodaemon ngIRCd should be running as a foreground process. -p, --passive Server-links won't be automatically established. -t, --configtest Reads, validates and dumps the configuration file as interpreted by the server. Then exits. Use "--help" to see a short help text describing all available parameters the server understands, with "--version" the ngIRCd shows its version number. In both cases the server exits after the output. -- $Id: INSTALL,v 1.21 2005/02/10 08:20:09 alex Exp $