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ngIRCd - FAQ, Tips & Tricks

General

Is it possible to link ngIRCd with other non-ngIRCd servers?

Yes and no. Back in the beginning (2001, 2002, ...) the server-server protocol used by ngIRCd was compatible to the original ircd used by IRCNet at that time, version 2.10.3p3. And most probably this is still the case today, although not actively tested for a long time.

Please note that newer ircd versions (2.11.x) are not compatible any more!

And other server-server protocols were never supported.

Is there a homepage with further information and downloads?

Yes. Please visit https://ngircd.barton.de :-)

Why should I use ngIRCd instead of the original one?

The README.md file and the homepage list a few advantages of ngIRCd:

  • Well arranged (lean) configuration file.
  • Simple to build, install, configure, and maintain.
  • Supports IPv6 and SSL.
  • Can use PAM for user authentication.
  • Lots of popular user and channel modes are implemented.
  • Supports "cloaking" of users.
  • No problems with servers that have dynamic IP addresses.
  • Freely available, modern, portable and tidy C source.
  • Wide field of supported platforms, including AIX, A/UX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, macOS, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris and Windows with WSL or Cygwin.

Building and Compilation

The ./configure script is missing in the source directory!?

When using sources checked out via Git, the configure script as well as the Makefile.in templates must be generated using the GNU automake, autoconf and pkg-config tools. To simplify this task run the ./autogen.sh script which will execute the required commands for you; then continue with executing the ./configure script as usual.

Please see the INSTALL.md file for details!

Error message aclocal: command not found

GNU automake is missing on your system but required for building Git versions of ngIRCd. Install GNU automake 1.6 or later and try again.

Error message autoheader: command not found?

GNU autoconf is missing on your system but required for building Git versions of ngIRCd. Install GNU autoconf 2.52 or later and try again.

Error message automake: configure.in: AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE must be used?

Most probably you are using version 1.5 of GNU automake which seems to be incompatible to the build system of ngIRCd. Solution: upgrade to at least version 1.6 of GNU automake.

(If you are using Debian 3.0 "Woody" you can try to downgrade to version 1.4 of GNU automake shipped with this distribution; it should work, too.)

Troubleshooting ngIRCd Runtime Issues

Always start with:

  1. Make sure that ngIRCd parsed its configuration file as it was intended! Run ngircd --configest and double-check its output!

  2. Check the logs of your system, especially the entries generated by ngIRCd! Where you can find the log messages depends on your system and your setup: it can be plain text files in /var/log/ (syslog) or the systemd journal database, for example.

  3. Ensure that the daemon started up successfully, is actually running and did not stop/crash in the meantime. You can check this with your service manager (like systemctl status ngircd on Linux systems using systemd) or using pgrep -l ngircd to check for "ngircd" processes. If ngIRCd is not running, try to restart the service and check the service status and the logs (syslog, systemd journal) again!

Where is the log file stored?

See introduction to this section above :-)

"Connection refused" errors

  1. Is the daemon really running? See introduction to this section above!

  2. Does ngIRCd listen on the correct interface(s) and port(s)? On Linux, you can check this with sudo ss -ltnp|awk '/ngircd/{print $4}, for example. Check your Listen and Ports settings in the [Global] (and [SSL]) sections and the startup messages of the daemon, especially the lines stating "Now listening on xxx:yyy (socket zzz)"!

  3. Are you able to connect to the ngIRCd service locally from the system the daemon runs on? Test all the interface IP addresses you expect ngIRCd to listen on, for example with a regular IRC client or tools like telnet or nc ("net cat"): telnet localhost 6667, nc 192.168.1.2 6667, ...

    If all the above works as expected, the issue most probably is not with ngIRCd or its configuration but the network layer.

  4. Are the port(s) ngIRCd listens on open and not blocked by a firewall? Check the logs of your firewall solution (on the server itself and all firewalls "in front of it") and use tools like tcpdump to check the network layer!

Issues related to running ngIRCd inside of a chroot environment

I cannot connect to remote peers when I use the chroot option, the following is logged: Can't resolve example.com: unknown error!

See next question blow ...

When running ngIRCd inside a chroot, no IP addresses can be translated in DNS names, errors like "Name or service not known" are logged!

On Linux/glibc with chroot enabled you need to put some libraries inside the chroot as well, notably libnss_dns; maybe others. Unfortunately, even linking ngIRCd statically does not help this. So you can either copy all the required files into the chroot directory:

mkdir -p ./chroot/etc ./chroot/lib
cp -a /etc/hosts /etc/resolv.conf /etc/nsswitch.conf ./chroot/etc/
cp -a /lib/libresolv* /lib/libnss_* ./chroot/lib/

Or you can try to link ngIRCd against an other C library (like dietlibc) that do not depend on NSS modules and these files.

IRC Features

I have added an [Oper] section, but how do I log in as an IRC operator?

You can use the /OPER <name> <password> command in your IRC client to become an IRC operator as defined in an [Oper] block in your configuration file.

ngIRCd will also log all OPER requests (using syslog), and if an OPER command fails you can look there to determine why it did not work (bad password, unauthorized host mask, ...).

Please keep in mind that the "name" in the /OPER command is not related to your nick name at all!

I am an IRC operator, but MODE doesn't work!

By default, IRC operators are still not allowed to use /MODE globally.

If you set OperCanUseMode = yes in your configuration, then IRC operators can use the /MODE command for changing modes even when they are not joined to the specific channel.

How can I "auto-op" users in channels?

ngIRCd can't do this: you would have to use some "IRC Services", like Atheme or Anope.

See doc/Services.txt for setup instructions.

Bugs!?

Is there a list of known bugs and desired feature enhancements?

Yes. Have a look at the bug tracking system (GitHub issues) for ngIRCd located at https://github.com/ngircd/ngircd/issues. There you can file bug reports and feature requests as well as search the bug database.

What should I do if I found a bug?

Please file a bug report at https://github.com/ngircd/ngircd/issues/new! The authors will be notified automagically :-)