ngIRCd - Next Generation IRC Server

http://ngircd.barton.de/

(c)2001-2024 Alexander Barton and Contributors.

ngIRCd is free software and published under the

terms of the GNU General Public License.

-- ChangeLog --

ngIRCd 27 (2024-04-26)

- Update ChangeLog, NEWS, AUTHORS.md & doc/Platforms.txt for ngIRCd 27.

- Clarify in the sample configuration file and the ngircd.conf(5) manual

page that the "CAFile" option is unset by default.

- Fix channel symbol returned in the RPL_NAMREPLY(353) numeric of NAMES

commands for secret (mode +s) channels: this should be "@", not "=".

Thanks Val Lorentz <progval+git@progval.net> for the patch!

Closes #313.

- Add an example filter file for "Fail2Ban": contrib/ngircd-fail2ban.conf.

- Don't abort startup when setgid/setuid() fails with EINVAL: Both setgid(2)

as well as setuid(2) can fail with EINVAL in addition to EPERM, their

manual pages state "EINVAL: The user/group ID specified in uid/gid is not

valid in this user namespace ". So not only treat EPERM as an "acceptable

error" and continue with logging the error, but do the same for EINVAL.

This was triggered by the Void Linux xbps-uunshare(1) tool used for

building "XBPS source packages" and reported by luca in #ngircd. Thanks!

- Test suite: Don't use "pgrep -u" when LOGNAME and USER are not set

Thanks for reporting this on IRC, luca!

ngIRCd 27~rc1 (2024-04-13)

- Validate certificates on server links. Up to now, ngIRCd optionally used

SSL/TLS encrypted server-server links but never checked and validated any

certificates. Now ngIRCd validates SSL/TLS certificates on outgoing

server-server links by default and drops(!) connections when the remote

certificate is invalid (for example self-signed, expired, not matching the

host name, ...). Therefore you have to make sure that all relevant

*certificates are valid* (or to disable certificate validation on this

connection using the new `SSLVerify = false` setting in the affected

`[Server]` block, where the remote certificate is not valid and you can not

fix this issue).

The original patch for OpenSSL dates back to 2009 and was written by Florian

Westphal and was extended for GnuTLS in 2014 by Christoph Biedl. But it took

us another 10 years to bring it to life ... oh my! Many thanks to both

Florian and Christoph!

Closes #120.

- Add support for the "sd_notify" protocol of systemd(8): Periodically

"ping" the service manager (every 3 seconds) and set a status message

showing current connection statistics which then is included in "systemctl

status ngircd.service" output. In addition, this enables using the

systemd(8) watchdog functionality ("WatchdogSec") for the "ngircd.service"

unit and allows it to use the "notify" service type, which results in

better status tracking by the service manager.

- Try to set file descriptor limit to its maximum and show info on startup:

The number of possible parallel connections is limited by the file

descriptor limit of the process (among other things). Therefore try to

upgrade the current "soft" limit to its "hard" maximum (but limited to

100000 instead of "infinite"), and show an information or even warning when

the limit is still less than the configured "MaxConnections" setting. Please

note that ngIRCd and its linked libraries (like PAM) need file descriptors

not only for incoming and outgoing IRC connections, but for reading files

and inter-process communication, too! Therefore the actual connection limit

is less(!) than the file descriptor limit!

- Update and fix the logcheck(8) rules file.

- METADATA: Fix unsetting the "cloakhost" hostname, which did not result in

the original hostname being restored, but actually resulted in an empty

string being used as the client hostname -- which is a protocol violation.

- Update the "rpm" make target to use the rpmbuild(8) command.

- Add a "Docker file" (contrib/Dockerfile) and corresponding documentation

(doc/Container.md) to the project. The resulting container is based on the

latest Debian "stable-slim" container and built using a "build container".

- Remove outdated, unsupported and broken support for splint(1).

- Don't show the default config file name on config errors: The configuration

can be set in drop-in files in the include directory, too, so it is not

clear in which file it is actually missing.

- No longer use a default built-in value for the "IncludeDir" directive when

a configuration file was explicitly specified on the command line using

"--config"/"-f": This way no default include directory is scanned when a

possibly non-default configuration file is used which (intentionally) did

not specify an "IncludeDir" directive. So now you can use "-f /dev/null"

for checking all built-in defaults, regardless of any local configuration

files in the default drop-in directory (which would have been read in

until this change).

- No longer log channel keys ("passwords") for predefined channels.

- The server "Name" in the "[Global]" section of the configuration file no

longer needs to be set: When not set (or empty), ngIRCd now tries to

deduce a valid IRC server name from the local host name ("node name"),

possibly adding a ".host" extension when the host name does not contain a

dot (".") which is required in an IRC server name ("ID").

This new behavior, with all configuration parameters now being optional,

allows running ngIRCd without any configuration file at all.

- Silence some compiler warnings.

- autogen.sh: Prefer automake 1.11 over other releases because this is the

last release supporting "de-ANSI-fication" using the included ansi2knr tool.

And because we _want_ to support old K&R platforms, we try hard to use this

release of automake when available to generate our build system.

Note: This is only relevant for you if you are building from Git sources.

- Autodetect support for IPv6 by default: Until now, IPv6 support was disabled

by default, which seems a bit outdated in 2024. Note: You still can pass

"--enable-ipv6"/"--disable-ipv6" to the ./configure script to forcefully

activate or deactivate IPv6 support.

- Do IDENT requests even when DNS lookups are disabled: Up to now disabling

DNS in the configuration disabled IDENT lookups as well (for no good

reason). Now you can activate/deactivate DNS lookups and IDENT requests

completely separately. Thanks for reporting this, Miniontoby!

Closes #291.

- Update config.guess (2023-08-22) and config.sub (2023-09-19) files.

- Fix Channel Admins being able to to set Channel Owner status! "Sarah"

reported this back in April 2021 and proposed a patch, thanks a lot!

- Test suite: Update for OpenSSL 3.x, some command outputs changed, clean up

shell scripts and make the getpid.sh script more robust.

- Allow SSL client-only configurations without keys/certificates: You don't

need to configure certificates/keys as long as you don't configure

SSL-enabled listening ports. This can make sense when you want to only link

your local daemon to an uplink server using SSL and only have clients on

your local host or in your fully trusted network, where SSL is not required.

- Remove the unmaintained contrib/MacOSX/ folder: this includes the Xcode

project as well as the outdated macOS "Package Maker" configuration. The

sample launchd(8) configuration properties list file was moved to

"contrib/de.barton.ngircd.plist" and kept.

- Fix showing the "Ident" option in "--configtest" output which was never

shown because of a coding error. Whoops!

- Change GnuTLS "slot handling" messages to debug level: Those messages are

about an internal implementation detail, not relevant for an administrator

of ngIRCd.

- Enlarge buffer for log messages: For example, SSL/TLS certificate

information can easily get longer than 256 characters. So enlarge the log

buffer to 1 KB to avoid cutting off relevant information.

- Respect "SSLConnect" option for incoming connections and do not accept

incoming plain-text ("non SSL") server connections for servers configured

with "SSLConnect" enabled. This change prevents an authenticated

client-server being able to force the server-server to send its password

on a plain-text connection when SSL/TLS was intended.

- Always try to close a connection with errors immediately, but try hard

to avoid too much recursion. Without this patch, an outgoing server

connection could get stuck in an "endless" state trying to write out data

over and over again.

- Add "hopm.service" to "Wants" and "Before" dependencies in the sample

systemd unit file (Hopm is the successor of Bopm).

- Update Debian package configuration using current "dh_make", package

dependencies and build rules. And no longer build 3 different versions,

only build "ngircd" which now includes support for IDENT, PAM (disabled in

the ngircd.conf installed by the package), SSL (OpenSSL), ZLib and IPv6.

- Return ERR_NOTEXTTOSEND on empty PRIVMSG content, which matches the

behavior of other servers.

- Add a new option "Autojoin" to [Channel] blocks: When it is set, ngIRCd

automatically joins all local users to this channel on connect. Note: The

users must have permissions to access the channel, otherwise joining them

will fail!

Thanks Ivan Agarkov <i_agarkov@wargaming.net> for the initial patch!

- Hide invisible (+i) users on "WHOIS <pattern>": Let's behave like most(?)

other IRC daemons (at least ircd2.11) and hide all +i users when WHOIS is

used with a pattern. Otherwise privacy of this users is not guaranteed and

the +i mode a bit useless ...

Reported by Cahata on #ngircd, thanks!

- Update the final "closing connection" message: Add some more information

like nick name, user name, host name and bring it in line with some other

implementations (at least ircd2.11 and Hybrid).

- Fix RPL_INVITING message: All numeric replies must originate from an IRC

server, never from a client. Thanks "tommyrot" for reporting this!

Closes #307.

- Enhance some log messages, for example for errors when accepting new

connections.

- Make the debug log level ("--debug"/-"d" command line option) always

available, not only when ./configure'd with "--enable-debug": the latter

now only enables additional checks (like the tests done using assert(2))

and is signalled by adding "+DEBUG" to the version "feature string". This

change enables everyone to get even more detailed logging when required.

- Always report an error when a parameter is missing in a channel "MODE +k"

or "MODE +l" command, and better validate their parameters: return the new

numeric ERR_INVALIDMODEPARAM_MSG(696) on errors.

Thanks Val Lorentz for reporting this!

Closes #290.

- Allow IRC Operators to use the WHO command on any channel.

- Add configuration for "ngIRCd CI" GitHub Action, no longer use Travis-CI.

- Send the NAMES list and channel topic to users "forcefully" joined to a

channel using NJOIN, like they joined on their own using JOIN, and

streamline the order of NAMES list and channel topic messages.

Closes #288.

- Fix (invalid) error messages when setting modes on local channels which

are defined in the configuration file.

- Fix handling of G-Lines/K-Lines with cloaked host names.

- Streamline logging of debug messages.

- Added a new command line option "-y"/"--syslog", with which logging to

syslog can be activated/deactivated separately from running on the console

(using "--nodaemon") or in the background.

Thanks Katherine Peeters for the patch and pull request!

Closes #294.

- Fix a possible race condition while introducing new clients in the network.

- Update, enhance and extend our documentation in README.md, INSTALL.md,

doc/HowToRelease.txt and the manual pages ngircd(8) and ngircd.conf(5), add

a new doc/QuickStart.md document, and convert some more documentation files

to Markdown (AUTHORS.md, contrib/README.md, doc/FAQ.md, doc/SSL.md).

ngIRCd 26.1 (2021-01-02)

- Fix a "format string" compiler warning (detected on OpenBSD).

- No longer set "AI_ADDRCONFIG" when resolving host names, even when it

exists: with this option set, on an IPv6-only host, we prevent 127.0.0.1

to get translated properly, even when the loopback interface has this

address configured! And as the test suite uses 127.0.0.1, it was broken

on IPv6-only hosts.

The drawback is that the resolver possibly returns more addresses now,

even of an unsupported/not connected address family; but this shouldn't

do much harm in practice, as ngIRCd iterates over all returned addresses

while trying to establish an outgoing connection.

Closes #281.

- Revert "Show allowed channel types in ISUPPORT(005) numeric only", which

was introduced in 26~rc1: This lead to some IRC clients assuming "oh, no

channel prefix characters at all, so no channels at all, so no PRIVMSG can

go to any channel" when "AllowedChannelTypes" was set to the empty string

("") -- which is not the case when there are pre-defined channel set up or

other servers still having channels!

So "allowed channel types" != "supported channel types", and we always have

to list all supported ones in the ISUPPORT(005) numeric!

Closes #285.

- Test suite: Wait 2 seconds after reloading the daemon, which is required

because on reload, all listening ports are closed, configuration updated,

and then opened again. This lead to subsequent tests running while the

daemon isn't listening on any ports, and that's why some tests could fail.

Closes #280.

- platformtest.sh: Try to mangle CLang name more intelligently.

- Documentation: Fixed URLs of Atheme IRC services, updated all mentions

from CVS to Git, and updated Platforms.txt -- Oh, and it is 2021 now! ;-)

ngIRCd 26 (2020-06-20)

ngIRCd 26~rc2 (2020-06-11)

- Add AppStream metadata file (contrib/de.barton.ngircd.metainfo.xml).

- Don't send invalid CHANINFO commands when a channel has mode +k set but no

key is known to the server. This can happen with a misconfigured predefined

channel, for example, and looked like this: "CHANINFO #test +Pk 0 :" --

note the unset key represented by the two spaces. Fix this by sending a

"*" in this case and update the CHANINFO documentation, too.

- ngircd.spec: Fix names of README.md and INSTALL.md, add ".md" extension.

- Update description texts in the README.md file, the RPM and Debian package

files and the manual page: bring them in line with the updated homepage.

- Server-Server protocol: Fix use-after-free when unregistering a directly

connected server sending a SQUIT for itself.

- Server-Server protocol: Detect bogus SERVER commands lacking a prefix.

Thanks Hilko Bengen (hillu) for finding & reporting this as well for the

patch & pull request (even if fixed differently).

Closes #275.

- Fix the PING-PONG logic: In ngIRCd 26~rc1 this was completely broken (while

trying to fix timeouts during server handshakes in bigger networks): the

daemon never disconnected any stale peers but kept sending out PINGs over

and over again ...

- Test suite: Add missing files needed to test SSL support to "EXTRA_DIST",

so that they are included in distribution archives: in rc1, "make check"

fails when using sources from an archive and enabling SSL support.

Thanks to Hilko Bengen <bengen@hilluzination.de> for the patch!

ngIRCd 26~rc1 (2020-05-10)

- Tweak & update doc/HowToRelease.txt, .mailmap and AUTHORS files.

- Allow up to 512 characters per line in MOTD and help text files (but keep

in mind that lines can't get that long, because they have to be prefixed

before being sent to the client). But this allows for more fancy MOTDs :-)

Closes #271.

- Show the actually allowed channel types in the ISUPPORT(005) numeric which

are configured by the "AllowedChannelTypes" configuration variable.

Closes #273.

- Handle commands in the read buffer before reading more data and don't wait

for the network in this case: If there are more bytes in the read buffer

already than a single valid IRC command can get long (513 bytes), wait for

this/those command(s) to be handled first and don't try to read even more

data from the network (which most probably would overflow the read buffer

of this connection soon).

- Update Travis-CI configuration, "sudo" is deprecated.

- Log G-/K-Line changes only when not initiated by a server: this prevents

the log from becoming spammed during "net bursts".

- Update test suite to include SSL tests, including checking for reloading

certificates during runtime.

- Makefile.am: Replace "make" with "${MAKE}". This fixes warnings like this:

"warning: jobserver unavailable: using -j1. Add `+' to parent make rule."

Thanks to Sam James (sam_c) <sam@cmpct.info>!

Closes #270.

- Add support for GnuTLS certificate reload, which is quite handy when using

Let's Encrypt, for example. Until now this was only supported when linked

with OpenSSL. Thanks a lot, Hilko Bengen <bengen@hilluzination.de>!

- Remove deprecated legacy configuration options and related functions that

have been marked for removal for quite some time:

- PredefChannelsOnly (v22)

- NoticeAuth (v24)

- NoXXX (v19)

- Old '[GLOBAL]' section handling (v19)

Thanks to Michi <michi+ngircd@dataswamp.org> for the patch!

- Fix recursion bug on write errors: Depending on the stack size, too many

clients on the same channel quitting at the same time would trigger a crash

due to too many recursive calls to Conn_Close(). Thanks to Michi

<michi+ngircd@dataswamp.org> for the patch!

- Fix builds using GCC option -fno-common, which is the default starting with

GCC 10. Thanks to Michi <michi+ngircd@dataswamp.org> for the patch!

Closes #266.

- Convert INSTALL and README files to Markdown.

- Allow setting arbitrary channel modes in the configuration file by handling

them like in MODE commands, and allow multiple "Modes =" lines per [Channel]

section. Thanks to Michi <michi+ngircd@dataswamp.org>!

Closes #55.

- Add "FNC" (forced nick changes) to ISUPPORT(005) numeric. Most probably

this doesn't make any difference to any client, but it seems correct.

See <http://www.irc.org/tech_docs/005.html> for details.

- Reuse old SSL key if loading a new one failed.

- Remove outdated OpenBSD/NetBSD systrace.policy.

- Enhance handling of command line errors, and return with exit code 0 ("no

error") when "--help" or "--version" is used (which resulted in exit code 1,

"error" before). Exit with code 2 ("command line error") for all other

invalid command line options, and show the error message itself on stderr

(instead of stdout and exit code 1, "generic error", as before).

This new behavior is more in line with the GNU "coding standards",

see <https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/_002d_002dhelp.html>.

- Fix and update Xcode project: Reference correct contrib/Makefile.am file,

correctly sort contrib/nglog.sh and add "ORGANIZATIONNAME" setting.

- contrib/ngindent.sh: Add more GNU indent options for better results, and

add the ".sh" suffix to bring this script in line with the others in the

contrib/ folder.

- Add ./contrib/nglog.sh: This script parses the log output of ngircd(8),

and colorizes the messages according to their log level. Example usage:

ngircd -f $PWD/doc/sample-ngircd.conf -np | ./contrib/nglog.sh

- Log received signals with their names using strsignal(3), when available.

- Make test suite compatible with Haiku OS.

- Fix host mask cloaking bug, don't cloak multiple times: Previously, each

server would cloak every user's host mask. The problem is that if a network

has more than one server, then a user's host mask would get cloaked twice.

This patch ensures that a server only cloaks the host mask if it has not yet

been cloaked (the period indicates it's still an IP address). Thanks to

JRMU <jrmu@lecturify.com> for the patch!

Closes #228.

- Enlarge buffers of info texts to 128 bytes. This includes:

- "Real name" of a client (4th filed of the USER command).

- Server info text ("Info" configuration option).

- Admin info texts and email address ("AdminInfo1", "AdminInfo2" and

"AdminEmail" configuration options).

- Network name ("Network" configuration option).

The limit was 64 bytes before ...

Closes #258.

- Streamline handling of invalid and unset server name: Don't exit during

runtime (REHASH command, HUP signal), because the server name can't be

changed in this case anyway and the new invalid name will be ignored.

- Fix and extend documentation: Fix some typos, fix syntax of LINKS and LIST

commands, whitespace and spelling fixes, update dependencies and add some

more information about IRCv3 support.

Thanks to Thanks Windree, Étienne Mollier <etienne.mollier@mailoo.org> and

Christoph Biedl <debian.axhn@manchmal.in-ulm.de>.

Closes #264.

- Slightly reorder startup steps, and enhance logging:

- Show name of configuration file at the beginning of start up.

- Add a message when ngIRCd is ready, including its host name.

- Show name of configuration file on REHASH (SIGHUP), too.

- Change level of "done message" to NOTICE, like "starting" & "ready".

- Initialize IO functions before channels, connections, clients, ...

- configure.ng: OpenSSL can depends on lz or latomic so use pkg-config to

find those dependencies and fallback to existing mechanism.

Closes #256.

- ngircd.conf.5: Fix wording as suggested by lintian.

ngIRCd 25 (2019-01-23)

- Fix documentation of MotdPhrase length, which actually is 126 characters:

update sample configuration file as well as the man page. Thanks to

shankari <shankari@eecs.berkeley.edu>.

Closes #254.

- Implement new configuration option "MaxPenaltyTime", which configures the

maximum penalty time increase in seconds, per penalty event. Set to -1 for

no limit (the default), 0 to disable penalties altogether. ngIRCd doesn't

use penalty increases higher than 2 seconds during normal operation, so

values higher than 1 rarely make sense.

Disabling (or reducing) penalties can greatly speed up "make check" runs

for example, see below, but are mostly a debugging feature and normally

not meant to be used on production systems!

Some example timings running "make check" from my macOS workstation:

- MaxPenaltyTime not set: 4:41,79s

- "MaxPenaltyTime = 1": 3:14,71s

- "MaxPenaltyTime = 0": 25,46s

Closes #249 and #251.

- Fix compilation without deprecated OpenSSL APIs. Thanks to Rosen Penev

<rosenp@gmail.com> for the patch!

Closes #252.

- Update Xcode project for latest Xcode version (10.0)

- Fix some compiler warnings of Apple Xcode/Clang

- Allow a 5th parameter in WEBIRC. Thanks to "ItsOnlyBinary".

Closes #247.

- Update some more documentation files and source code comments.

- Platforms.txt: Add and update systems.

ngIRCd 25~rc1 (2018-08-11)

- Update config.guess (2018-03-08) and config.sub (2018-03-08) files.

- Correctly retry to establish an outgoing connections when forking of the

resolver sub-process failed (for example because of lack of free memory).

Until now, such a connection was never retried once this error was hit.

Thanks to Robert Obermeier for reporting this bug!

Closes #243.

- Fix a "use after free" bug which can be triggered on a newly established

connection when the daemon handles an ERROR command received from the peer

during client login. Thanks a lot to Joseph Bisch <joseph.bisch@gmail.com>

for discovering and reporting this issue!

- Only send TOPIC updates to a channel when the topic actually changed:

This prevents the channel from becoming flooded by unnecessary TOPIC update

messages, that can happen when IRC services try to enforce a certain topic

but which is already set (at least on the local server), for example.

Therefore still forward it to all servers, but don't inform local clients

(still update setter and timestamp information, though).

- Update Xcode project for latest Xcode version (9.2). This includes adding

missing and deleting obsolete file references.

- Handle user mode "C" ("Only users that share a channel are allowed to send

messages") like user mode "b" ("block private messages and notices"): allow

messages from servers, services, and IRC Operators, too. Change proposed by

"wowaname" back in 2015 in #ngircd, thanks!

- Fix some compiler warnings.

- Add contrib/ngircd.logcheck: Some sample logcheck(8) rules.

- Allow IRC Ops and remote servers to KILL service clients: such clients

behave like regular users, therefore IRC operators and servers should be

able to KILL them: for example to resolve nick collisions.

Closes #242.

- Don't forward KILLs to other servers if they've been blocked locally:

This prevents clients from killing IRC services, for example.

Closes #238 and #239.

- Fix a cross-compiler issue related to the Get_Error() function.

Closes #240 and #241.

- Update ./doc/Services.txt, enhance configuration examples.

ngIRCd 24 (2017-01-20)

- Make sure that ./contrib/platformtest.sh aborts when ./autogen.sh fails.

- Update config.guess (2016-10-02) and config.sub (2016-11-04) files.

- Build Debian packages with OpenSSL instead of GnuTLS: OpenSSL allows

to reload used certificates on runtime for example (which is very

useful when using Let's Encrypt), and therefore is preferred. And

explicitly specify the "source format".

- Fix handling of connection pool allocation and enlargement: up to now,

the daemon only enlarged its connection pool when accepting new incoming

client or server connections, not when establishing new outgoing server

links, which could lead to problems when hitting the configured limit,

see "MaxConnections". Thanks to Lukas Braun (k00mi) for reporting this!

Closes #231.

ngIRCd 24~rc1 (2017-01-07)

- Enhance systemd service file, and install it in Debian package.

- Update configuration of Debian package.

- Log privilege violations and failed OPER request with log level "error"

and send it to the "&SERVER" channel, too.

- Immediately shut down connection when receiving an "ERROR" command,

don't wait for the peer to close the connection. This allows the daemon

to forward the received "ERROR" message in the network, instead of the

very generic "client closed connection" message.

- Fix sending of entry duration (no negative values!) when synchronizing

"x-lines" (G-LINES).

- List expiration (G-LINES): use same log level as when setting, and log

this event to the &SERVER channel, too.

- Explicitly forbid remote servers to modify "x-lines" (G-LINES) when the

"AllowRemoteOper" configuration option isn't set, even when the command

seems to originate from the remote server itself: this prevents GLINE's

to become set during server handshake in this case (what wouldn't be

possible during regular runtime when a remote IRC Op sends the command)

and what can't be undone by IRC Ops later on (because of the missing

"AllowRemoteOper" option) ...

- Make scripts and init-files in ./contrib executable.

- Fix building ngIRCd with OpenSSL 1.1. Thanks to Christoph Biedl

<ngircd.anoy@manchmal.in-ulm.de> for the patch!

- Fix code indentation warnings of gcc 6.2.

- Update config.guess (2016-04-02) and config.sub (2016-03-30) files.

- Fix warnings of the "shellcheck" linter in autogen.sh, contrib/ngindent

and contrib/platformtest.sh.

- Update Xcode project for latest Xcode version (8.0), and fix "duplicate

symbols" error messages when building (linking) the binary.

- Add "Documentation" variables to systemd configuration files.

- Make sure that SYSCONFDIR is always set, which can be handy when

using source code linters when ./configure hasn't been run already.

- Add the new "PAMServiceName" configuration option to specify the name

used as PAM service name. This setting allows to run multiple ngIRCd

instances with different PAM configurations for each instance.

Thanks to Christian Aistleitner <christian@quelltextlich.at> for the

patch, closes #226.

- Add an ".editorconfig" file to the project.

- Travis-CI: use "container-based infrastructure".

- Limit the number of message targets, and suppress duplicates: This

prevents an user from flooding the server using commands like this:

"PRIVMSG nick1,nick1,nick1,...".

Duplicate targets are suppressed silently (channels and clients).

In addition, the maximum number of targets per PRIVMSG, NOTICE, ...

command are limited to MAX_HNDL_TARGETS (25). If there are more, the

daemon sends the new 407 (ERR_TOOMANYTARGETS_MSG) numeric, containing

the first target that hasn't been handled any more. Closes #187.

- Test suite: Add new test for server-server logins.

- contrib/ngindent: Fix shebang line.

- Make contrib/platformtest.sh script more portable, and only show

"runs=Y" when the test suite really has been passed successfully.

- Code cleanup in the NJOIN handler and the function killing clients as

well as the function sending messages to a "mask" (cleaner code, more

fault tolerant, better code comments).

- Update and enhance documentation: README file, doc/Platforms.txt,

doc/Modes.txt, doc/Commands.txt, doc/PAM.txt.

- Fix NJOIN not propagating "half ops" status: ngIRCd tested for the wrong

prefix of "half ops" when processing NJOIN commands and therefore never

classified a remote user as "half op".

Thanks to wowaname for pointing this out on #ngircd!

ngIRCd 23 (2015-11-16)

- Explicitly cast time_t to long when printing it out: this prevents

wrong sized data types on platforms where time_t doesn't equal a

long any more, for example on OpenBSD (which would result in garbled

output on those platforms).

- contrib/Debian/changelog: Fix email address.

- Documentation: Spelling fixes; update doc/Platforms.txt.

ngIRCd 23~rc1 (2015-09-06)

- Add ".clang_complete" file, which is used by the "linter-clang" package

of the Atom editor, for example.

- Make server-to-server protocol more robust: ngIRCd now catches more

errors on the server-to-server (S2S) protocol that could crash the

daemon before. This hasn't been a real problem because the IRC S2S

protocol is "trusted" by design, but the behavior is much better now.

Thanks to wowaname on #ngircd for pointing this out!

- Make platformtest.sh, autogen.sh, and ngircd.init more portable.

- Enables "reproducible builds" for ngIRCd: Use the optional BIRTHTIME

constant while building ngIRCd, which contains a time stamp for the

"Birth Date" information, in seconds since the epoch.

See <https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds>.

- Update "contrib/ngircd.service" file for systemd.

- INSTALL: Add deprecation notice for "PredefChannelsOnly" variable.

- Use "NOTICE *" before registration instead of "NOTICE AUTH". "AUTH" is

a valid nickname so sending notices to it is probably not a good idea.

Use "*" as the target instead as done with numerics when the nick is not

available. This mimics the behavior in Charybdis, IRCD-Hybrid, InspIRCd

2.2, Plexus 4, etc. Closes #217.

The "NoticeAuth" configuration variable (ngircd.conf) has been renamed

to "NoticeBeforeRegistration" accordingly, but the old name is still

supported for compatibility reasons.

- Implement new channel mode "N" (regular users can't change their nick

name while on this channel). Closes #214.

- README, AUTHORS: Update mailing list and issue tracker URLs.

- Remove doc/GIT.txt (it is outdated), update doc/Contributing.txt:

ngIRCd uses GitHub, and Git itself is quite common today. So don't

include an own Git "mini HowTo" any longer.

- Specify session context for OpenSSL clients. This enables some OpenSSL

clients, including Pidgin and stunnel 5.06, to reuse a session.

Patch by Tom Ryder <tom@sanctum.geek.nz>, thanks! Closes #182.

- Keep track of who placed bans, invites, and excepts.

Idea and implementation by LucentW, Thanks! Closes #203.

- Make setgroups(3) function optional: For example, Interix is missing

this function, which prevented ngIRCd to build on this platform. When

setgroups(3) isn't available, a warning message is issued on startup.

- Implement numeric RPL_LISTSTART(321). lightIRC and other clients

expecting RPL_LISTSTART should now behave correctly.

Idea and implementation by LucentW, Thanks! Closes #207.

- Update ngircd.conf.5: "CloakUserToNick" hides user _and_ real name.

This closes #208.

- Fix case insensitive pattern matching: Up to now, only the input

string became lowercased and was then compared to the pattern -- which

failed when the pattern itself wasn't all lowercase!

- Streamline the effect of "MorePrivacy" option: Update documentation

in ngircd.conf(5); don't hide channels for IRC Ops on LIST and don't

hide IP addresses/hostnames on WHOIS when "MorePrivacy" is in effect.

This closes #198.

- IRC operators now can kick anyone when "OperCanMode" is set.

Idea and implementation by LucentW, Thanks! Closes #202.

- Implement user mode "I": Hide channels on WHOIS: this mode prevents

ngIRCd from showing channels on WHOIS (IRC Operators can always see

the channel list).

Idea and implementation by LucentW, Thanks! Closes #197.

- INVITE command: Implement ERR_USERNOTONSERV(504) numeric and make sure

that the target user is on the same server when inviting other users

to local ("&") channels.

Idea by Cahata, thanks! Closes #183.

- INVITE command: Enforce 1 second penalty time, which prevents flooding

of the target client.

This closes #186. Reported by Cahata, thanks!

- MODE command: Always report channel creation time. Up to now when

receiving a MODE command, ngIRCd only reported the channel creation

time to clients that were members of the channel. This patch reports

the channel creation time to all clients, regardless if they are joined

to that channel or not. At least ircd-seven behaves like this.

This closes #188. Reported by Cahata, thanks!

- Update Xcode project for latest Xcode version (6.3).

ngIRCd 22.1 (2015-04-06)

- Update doc/Platforms.txt and doc/FAQ.txt.

- Fix spelling of RPL_WHOISBOT message text.

- Don't send nick name as default PART reason: No other IRC daemon seems

to do this (today?). Closes #185.

Reported by Cahata in #ngircd, thanks!

- Fix "WHO #<chan>" showing invisible users and hiding all visible, the

logic was reversed! This bug has been introduced by commit c74115f2,

"Simplify mode checking on channels and users within a channel", ngIRCd

releases 21, 21.1, and 22 are affected :-( Problem reported by Cahata

in #ngircd, Thanks!

- Fix typo in src/testsuite/README

- Auth PING: Fix our information text for manual sending of "PONG". Up to

now, ngIRCd doesn't send a valid IRC command at all, oops!

- Auth PING: Fix internal time stamp conversion and don't send a prefix in

our PING command. The prefix confuses WeeChat, at least, which doesn't

send an appropriate PONG in the case ...

Debugging and patch by "wowaname" on #ngircd, thanks!

- Fix syntax of ERR_LISTFULL_MSG(478) numeric. Pointed out by "wowaname"

in #ngircd, thanks!

- Enhance debug messages while sending CHANINFO commands.

- Reset "last try" timer when enabling a passive server. This results in

a new connection attempt as soon as possible.

- Change log message for "Can't resolve address" and for IP address

forgeries.

- doc/HowToRelease.txt: Add note about the bug tracker.

- Update "CipherList" to not enable SSLv3 by default. Idea, initial patch,

and testing by Christoph Biedl <ngircd.anoy@manchmal.in-ulm.de>.

- Change ngIRCd test suite not to use DNS lookups: Different operating

systems do behave quite differently when doing DNS lookups, for example

"127.0.0.1" sometimes resolves to "localhost" and sometimes to

"localhost.localdomain" (for example OpenBSD). And other OS resolve

"localhost" to the real host name (for example Cygwin). So not using

DNS at all makes the test site much more portable.

ngIRCd 22 (2014-10-11)

- Match all list patterns case-insensitive: this affects the invite-,

ban-, and except lists, as well as G-Lines an K-Lines.

Problem pointed out by "wowaname" on #ngircd, thanks!

ngIRCd 22~rc1 (2014-09-29)

- Sync "except lists" between servers: Up to now, ban, invite, and G-Line

lists have been synced between servers while linking -- but obviously

nobody noticed that except list have been missing ever since. Until now.

Thanks to "j4jackj", who reported this issue in #ngircd.

- Allow longer user names (up to 63 characters) for authentication.

- Correctly check that a server has a valid hostname and port, thanks to

David Binderman <dcb314@hotmail.com> who reported this bug.

- Fix the function which generates complete "IRC masks" from user input,

don't destroy the source buffer and use all provided parts (nick, user,

host name). This fixes GLINEs/KLINEs from not working in some situations.

- Increase MAX_SERVERS from 16 to 64: There are installations out there

that would like to configure more than 16 links per server, so increase

this limit. Best would be to get rid of MAX_SERVERS altogether and make

if fully dynamic, but start with this quick and dirty hack ...

- Debian: Don't adjust path names that are correct by default and correctly

set and use "docdir".

- Update config.guess and config.sub to recent versions.

- Test suite/platformtest.sh: Detect when tests have been skipped.

- doc/Bopm.txt: Update "connregex" and "kline" for current ngIRCd.

- Allow "DefaultUserModes" to set all possible modes, including modes only

settable by IRC Operators.

- Spoofed prefixes: Really kill connection on non-server links.

- Implement user mode "F": "relaxed flood protection". Clients with mode

"F" set are allowed to rapidly send data to the daemon. This mode is only

settable by IRC Operators and can cause problems in the network -- so be

careful and only set it on "trusted" clients!

User mode "F" is used by Bahamut for this purpose, for example.

- Handle "throttling" in a single function: ngIRCd implements "command

throttling" and "bps throttling" (bytes per second). The states are

detected in different functions, Conn_Handler() and Read_Request(), but

handle the actual "throttling" in a common function: this enables us to

guarantee consistent behavior and to disable throttling for special

connections in only one place

- Use server password when PAM is compiled in but disabled.

- Streamline punctuation of log messages.

- Return ISUPPORT(005) numerics on "VERSION". This is how ircd-seven,

Charybdis, Hybrid, and InspIRCd behave, for example.

- configure: Only link "contrib/Debian" if it exists, which isn't the case

on "VPATH builds", for example.

- Show the account name in WHOIS. This uses the same numeric as Charybdis

and ircu families: WHOISLOGGEDIN(330).

- Pattern matching: Remove "range matching" in our pattern matching code

using the "[...]" syntax, because [ and ] are valid characters in nick

names and one has to quote them currently using the "\" character, which

is quite unexpected for users.

- platformtest.sh: New option "-x", don't regenerate build system and

allow using separate source and build trees.

- Test suite: explicitly enable glibc memory checking.

- Make "MODE -k" handling more robust and compatible, send "fake '*' key"

in all replies.

- Update configure.ng: ngIRCd requires GNU autoconf 2.61 for generating its

build system, so update the build system accordingly and implement all

changes that autoupdate(1) suggests: Update AC_PREREQ and AC_INIT, use

AC_LINK_IFELSE, AC_RUN_IFELSE, and AC_COMPILE_IFELSE, and remove

AC_TYPE_SIGNAL (we don't use RETSIGTYPE).

- portabtest: Actually test the functions snprintf(), strlcpy(), strlcat(),

and vsnprintf() for correctness, not only existence (which was quite

useless, because if they weren't available, the program could not have

been linked at all ...).

- Implement new configuration option "Network": it is used to set the

(completely optional) "network name", to which this instance of the

daemon belongs. When set, this name is used in the ISUPPORT(005) numeric

which is sent to all clients connecting to the server after logging in.

- Update doc/Platforms.txt.

- Various code cleanups, remove unused code, streamline error handling.

Remove all imp.h and exp.h header files, support non-standard vsnprintf()

return codes, and fix some K&R C portability issues. Streamline

DEBUG_ARRAY, DEBUG_BUFFER, DEBUG_IO, DEBUG_ZIP definitions.

- Increase penalty time to 10 seconds when handling OPER commands with an

invalid password.

ngIRCd 21.1 (2014-03-25)

- Don't ignore but use the server password when PAM is compiled in but

disabled. Thanks to Roy Sindre Norangshol <roy.sindre@norangshol.no>!

- doc/Platforms.txt: Update from master branch.

- Really kill connections that send "spoofed prefixes" on non-server links.

This fixes commit 6cbe1308 which only killed the connection when the

spoofed prefix itself belonged to a non-server client.

- CHARCONV command: Fix handling conversion errors, don't overwrite already

converted text!

- doc/Services.txt: Update information for Anope 2.x.

- Correctly use cloaked IRC masks on "INVITE nickname": The cloaked IRC mask

of a user is his visible mask, so the daemon has to use it for generating

the "one time" entries for the invite list of the given channel, and not

the "real" mask which will never match while the target client is "+x", and

even worse, will disclose the real mask on "MODE #channel +I" commands :-/

Bug reported by Cahata on #ngircd, thanks!

- configure: Only link "contrib/Debian" if it exists. This isn't the case on

"VPATH builds", for example.

- Use $(MKDIR_P) instead of $(mkinstalldirs) in Makefile's and test for

"mkdir -p" using AC_PROG_MKDIR_P in "configure".

- Fix configure script and "make check" for TCP Wrappers (problems spotted on

OpenBSD): add missing #include's and static variables, and add libwrap at

the end of the configure run because if libwrap becomes added earlier,

other tests may fail.

- configure: add support for the LDFLAGS_END and LIBS_END variables to add

linker flags and libraries at the end of the configure run (CFLAGS_END has

been implemented already).

- platformtest.sh and Makefile.am: Don't use "test -e", it isn't portable.

- Update Copyright notices for 2014 :-)

- Fix permanent {G|K}LINES (with a timeout of 0 seconds).

- WEBIRC: Don't set the hostname received by the WEBIRC command when DNS

lookups are disabled, but use the IP address instead.

Reported by Toni Spets <toni.spets@iki.fi>, thanks!

- Check for working getaddrinfo() function: At least AIX 4.3.3 and 5.1 have a

broken implementation of getaddrinfo() which doesn't handle "0" as numeric

service correctly. This patch adds a configure check for this case and

changes all calling functions to only use getaddrinfo() if it "works".

See <http://www.stacken.kth.se/lists/heimdal-discuss/2004-05/msg00059.html>

- Only use the unsetenv() function when it is available (AIX 4.3 doesn't

support it, for example).

- Make sure that the source code is still compatible with the "ansi2knr" tool

and builds using non-ANSI K&R C compilers. Tested with Apple C on A/UX.

- Fix building ngIRCd without support for ZLIB compression. Reported by

"der_baer" on #ngircd, thanks!

ngIRCd 21 (2013-10-30)

- ./contrib/Debian/ngircd.init: Make sure no stale PID file is left over

when (re-)starting ngIRCd.

- Change ./contrib/platformtest.sh and update ./doc/Platforms.txt to

allow user names up to 8 characters.

- Call arc4random_stir() in forked subprocesses, when available. This

is required by FreeBSD <10 and current NetBSD at least to correctly

initialize the "arc4" random number generator on these platforms.

- Update our own Debian package configuration and fix the default path

of the "HelpFile" of the "full" package variants.

ngIRCd 21~rc2 (2013-10-20)

- Report the correct configuration file name on configuration errors,

support longer configuration lines, and warn when lines are truncated.

- Use arc4random() function to generate "random" numbers, when available.

- platformtest.sh: Detect clang compiler, and clean up GIT source tree

before building (when possible).

- Update (date of) manual pages.

- Update "Upgrade Information" in INSTALL file, add more systems to

doc/Platforms.txt, and fix spelling in NEWS and ChangeLog files =:)

- Fix remaining compiler warnings on OpenBSD.

ngIRCd 21~rc1 (2013-10-05)

- Actually KILL clients on GLINE/KLINE. (Closes bug #156)

- Adjust log messages for invalid and spoofed prefixes, which cleans up

logging of commands related to already KILL'ed clients. And don't

forward KILL commands for (already) unknown clients any more to prevent

unnecessary duplicates.

- Add support to show all user links using the "STATS L" (uppercase)

command (restricted to IRC Operators).

- Fixed blocking of server reconnects in some error configurations.

- Don't ignore SSL-related errors during startup any more: abort startup

when SSL is requested by the configuration but can't be initialized and

don't continue only listening on plain text communication ports.

(Closes bug #163)

- Implement configurable SSL cipher list selection for GnuTLS and OpenSSL

using the new configuration option "CipherList". In addition, this

changes the defaults to more secure values: "HIGH:!aNULL:@STRENGTH" for

OpenSSL, and "SECURE128" for GnuTLS.

- Fix "TRACE": Correctly return ERR_NEEDMOREPARAMS(461) (which basically

is "syntax error") when there are too many parameters.

- Clean up lots of permission and parameter checks in functions handling

IRC commands; and more consistently add penalty times on errors.

- Fix error numeric of WHOIS when no nick name has been provided:

as per RFC it should be ERR_NONICKNAMEGIVEN(431).

- Only log "IDENT ... no result" messages when an IDENT looked took place

and didn't return any data, not when IDENT has been disabled.

- Show connection flag "s" (SSL) in RPL_TRACE{LINK|SERVER} messages: now

you can check if a server-to-server link is SSL-encrypted or not using

the IRC "TRACE" command.

- Correctly discard supplementary groups on server startup.

- Save client IP address text for "WebIRC" users and correctly display

it on WHOIS, for example. (Closes bug #159)

- Implement the new configuration option "DefaultUserModes" which lists

user modes that become automatically set on new local clients right

after login. Please note that only modes can be set that the client

could set on itself, so you can't set "a" (away) or "o" (IRC Op),

for example! User modes "i" (invisible) or "x" (cloaked) etc. are

"interesting", though. (Closes bug #160)

- Add support for the new METADATA "account" property, which allows

services to automatically identify users after netsplits and across

service restarts.

- Enforce "penalty times" on error conditions more consistently and in

more places. Now most error codes sent back from the IRC server to the

client should result in a 2 second "penalty".

- Implement a new configuration option "AllowedChannelTypes" that lists

all allowed channel types (channel prefixes) for newly created channels

on the local server. By default, all supported channel types are allowed.

If set to the empty string, local clients can't create new channels at

all, which equals the old "PredefChannelsOnly = yes" setting.

This change deprecates the "PredefChannelsOnly" variable, too, but it is

still supported and translated to the appropriate "AllowedChannelTypes"

setting. When the old "PredefChannelsOnly" variable is processed, a

warning message is logged. (Closes bug #152)

- Add support for "client certificate fingerprinting". When a client

passes an SSL certificate to the server, the "fingerprint" will be

forwarded in the network which enables IRC services to identify the

user using this certificate and not using passwords.

- IRC Operator names, as defined in ngircd.conf, are logged now when

handling successful OPER commands.

- Some error conditions while handling IRC commands, like "permission

denied" or "need more parameters", result in more penalty times.

- The numeric replies of some commands became split too early which

resulted in more numeric reply lines than necessary.

- Implement a new configuration option "IncludeDir" in the "[Options]"

section that can be used to specify a directory which can contain

further configuration files and configuration file snippets matching

the pattern "*.conf". These files are read in after the main server

configuration file ("ngircd.conf" by default) has been read in and

parsed. The default is "$SYSCONFDIR/ngircd.conf.d", so that it is

possible to adjust the configuration only by placing additional files

into this directory. (Closes bug #157)

- Fix use-after-free in the Lists_CheckReason() function, which is used

to check if a client is a member of a particular ban/invite/... list.

- Xcode: fix detection of host OS, vendor, and CPU type, and update

project settings for Xcode 5.

- OS X PackageMaker: use relative path names in project files and package

with correct file permissions (requires root privileges on "make").

- Add Travis-CI configuration file (".travis.yml") to project.

- Look for possible cloaked Masks in Lists. Users with +x user mode can

be banned with their cloaked hostname now.

- Don't read SSL client data before DNS resolver is finished which could

have resulted in discarding the resolved client hostname and IDENT

reply afterwards, because in some situations (timing dependent) the

NICK and USER commands could have already been read in from the client,

stored in the buffer, and been processed.

Thanks to Julian Brost for reporting the issue and testing, and to

Federico G. Schwindt <fgsch@lodoss.net> for helping to debug it!

- Increase password length limit to 64 characters. (Closes bug #154)

- doc/Services.txt: Update Anope status and URL.

- Clean up Xcode project file, remove outdated files, add missing ones.

- Update Doxygen configuration file.

- configure: search for iconv_open as well as libiconv_open, because

on some installations iconv_open() is actually libiconv_open().

iconv_open() is the glibc version while libiconv_open() is the

libiconv version, now both variants are supported. (Closes bug #151)

- ngIRCd now accepts user names including "@" characters, saves the

unmodified name for authentication but stores only the part in front

of the "@" character as "IRC user name". And the latter is how

ircd2.11, Bahamut, and irc-seven behave as well. (Closes bug #155)

- Lots of IRC "information functions" like ADMIN, INFO, ... now accept

server masks and names of connected users (in addition to server names)

for specifying the target server of the command. (Closes bug #153)

- Implement a new configuration option "IdleTimeout" in the "[Limits]"

section of the configuration file which can be used to set a timeout

in seconds after which the whole daemon will shutdown when no more

connections are left active after handling at least one client.

The default is 0, "never".

This can be useful for testing or when ngIRCd is started using "socket

activation" with systemd(8), for example.

- Implement support for systemd(8) "socket activation".

- contrib/README: add description for more files.

- Enable WHOIS to display information about IRC Services using the new

numeric 310(RPL_WHOISSERVICE) This numeric is used for this purpose by

InspIRCd, for example -- but as usual, other numerics are in use, too,

like 613 in UltimateIRCd ...

Please note that neither the Operator (+o) not the "bot status" (+B)

of an IRC service is displayed in the output.

- Exit message: use singular & plural :-)

- autogen.sh: Check for autoconf/automake wrapper scripts

- Add missing punctuation marks in log messages, adjust some severity

levels, and make SSL-related messages more readable.

- AUTHORS file: Update list of contributors.

- Update systemd(8) example configuration files in ./contrib/ directory:

the "ngircd.service" file now uses the "forking" service type which

enhances the log messages shown by "systemctl status ngircd.service",

and the new "ngircd.socket" file configures a systemd socket that

configures a socket for ngIRCd and launches the daemon on demand.

- Enhance help system and the HELP command: now a "help text file" can be

set using the new configuration option "HelpFile" ("global" section),

which is read in and parsed on server startup and configuration reload,

and then is used to output individual help texts to specific topics.

Please see the file ./doc/Commands.txt for details.

ngIRCd 20.3 (2013-08-23)

- Security: Fix a denial of service bug (server crash) which could happen

when the configuration option "NoticeAuth" is enabled (which is NOT the

default) and ngIRCd failed to send the "notice auth" messages to new

clients connecting to the server (CVE-2013-5580).

ngIRCd 20.2 (2013-02-15)

- Security: Fix a denial of service bug in the function handling KICK

commands that could be used by arbitrary users to crash the daemon

(CVE-2013-1747).

- WHO command: Use the currently "displayed hostname" (which can be cloaked!)

for hostname matching, not the real one. In other words: don't display all

the cloaked users on a specific real hostname!

- configure: The header file "netinet/in_systm.h" already is optional in

ngIRCd, so don't require it in the configure script. Now ngIRCd can be

built on Minix 3 again :-)

- Return better "Connection not registered as server link" errors: Now ngIRCd

returns a more specific error message for numeric ERR_NOTREGISTERED(451)

when a regular user tries to use a command that isn't allowed for users but

for servers.

- Don't report ERR_NEEDMOREPARAMS(461) when a MDOE command with more modes

than nicknames is handled, as well as for channel limit and key changes

without specifying the limit or key parameters.

This is how a lot (all?) other IRC servers behave, including ircd2.11,

InspIRCd, and ircd-seven. And because of clients (tested with Textual and

mIRC) sending bogus MODE commands like "MODE -ooo nick", end-users got the

expected result as well as correct but misleading error messages ...

- Correctly detect when SSL subsystem must be initialized and take

outgoing connections (server links!) into account, too.

- autogen.sh: Enforce serial test harness on GNU automake >=1.13. The

new parallel test harness which is enabled by default starting with

automake 1.13 isn't compatible with our test suite.

And don't use "egrep -o", instead use "sed", because it isn't portable

and not available on OpenBSD, for example.

ngIRCd 20.1 (2013-01-02)

- Allow ERROR command on server and service links only, ignore them and

add a penalty time on all other link types.

- Enforced mode setting by IRC Operators: Only check the channel user

modes of the initiator if he is joined to the channel and not an IRC

operator enforcing modes (which requires the configuration option

"OperCanUseMode" to be enabled), because trying to check channel user

modes of a non-member results in an assertion when running with debug

code or could crash the daemon otherwise. This closes bug #147, thanks

to James Kirwill <james.kirwill@bk.ru> for tracking this down!

- Fix build system to cope with spaces in path names.

- Code cleanups, mostly to fix build warnings on Cygwin.

ngIRCd 20 (2012-12-17)

- Allow user names ("INDENT") up to 20 characters when ngIRCd has not

been configured for "strict RFC mode". This is useful if you are using

external (PAM) authentication mechanisms that require longer user names.

Patch suggested by Brett Smith <brett@w3.org>, see

<http://arthur.barton.de/pipermail/ngircd-ml/2012-October/000579.html>.

ngIRCd 20~rc2 (2012-12-02)

- Rework cloaked hostname handling and implement the "METADATA cloakhost"

subcommand: Now ngIRCd uses two fields internally, one to store the

"real" hostname and one to save the "cloaked" hostname. This allows

"foreign servers" (aka "IRC services") to alter the real and cloaked

hostnames of clients without problems, even when the user itself issues

additional "MODE +x" and "MODE -x" commands.

- RPL_UMODEIS: send correct target name, even on server links.

- Update platformtest.sh to follow autoconf changes and only generate

the "configure" script when it is missing.

- Fix the test suite to correctly execute test scripts even when stdout

is redirected.

- Fix some compiler warnings on NetBSD and OpenBSD.

ngIRCd 20~rc1 (2012-11-11)

- Update doc/Services.txt: describe the upcoming version of Anope 1.9.8,

then including a protocol module for ngIRCd. And remove our own patches

in ./contrib/Anope because they aren't supported any more ...

- Implement new "METADATA" command which can be used by remote servers

and IRC services to update client metadata like the client info text

("real name"), user name, and hostname, and use this command to

configure an cloaked hostname (user mode "+x") on remote servers:

This prevents "double cloaking" of hostnames and even cloaked

hostnames are in sync on all servers supporting "METADATA" now.

- Fix error message when trying to join non-predefined channels and the

"PredefChannelsOnly" configuration option is set.

- Implement new IRC "SVSNICK" command to allow remote servers (and IRC

services) to change nicknames of already registered users. The SVSNICK

command itself doesn't change the nickname, but it becomes forwarded

to the server to which the user is connected to. And then this server

initiates the real nickname changing using regular NICK commands.

This allows to run mixed networks with old servers not supporting the

SVSNICK command, because SVSNICK commands for nicknames on such servers

are silently ignored and don't cause a desynchronization of the network.

- Make server reconnect time a little bit more random, so that two

servers trying to connect to each other asynchronously don't try this

in exactly the same time periods and kick each other off ...

- Don't accept connections for servers already being linked: there was a

time frame that could result in one connection overwriting the other,

e. g. the incoming connection overwriting the status of the outgoing

one. And this could lead to all kind of weirdness (even crashes!) later

on: now such incoming connections are dropped.

- New configuration option "MaxListSize" to configure the maximum number

of channels returned by a LIST command. The default is 100, as before.

- Implement user mode "b", "block messages": when a user has set mode "b",

all private messages and notices to this user are blocked if they don't

originate from a registered user, an IRC Op, server or service. The

originator gets an error numeric sent back in this case,

ERR_NONONREG_MSG (486), which is used by UnrealIRCd, too. (Closes #144)

- WHOIS: Not only show RPL_WHOISHOST_MSG to local IRC operators, but show

it to all IRC operators in the network. And don't show it to anybody if