Connecting Two Unreal IRCD's - Do I run two Services?

Michael · Post by **Michael** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:26 pm

Hello,

I've been running Unreal IRCD for awhile now but I have not had the need to run two joined IRCD servers together. This however has changed and I have some questions I hope some of you can answer.

I will be connecting two Unreal IRCD's together but do I need to run two sets of Services as well? If not, would I just Point to the services already running on Server No.1? What is the best way to connect these two servers together?

Can you point me to some documentation which outlines exactly how someone would connect to servers together?

I'd appreciate any insight that you guys can provide that will make this connection as smooth as possible.

Thanks for your help in advance,

Michael

Stealth · Post by **Stealth** » Wed May 25, 2005 10:34 pm

Only 1 services server is needed.

As long as all the U:Lines and set::services-server settings are correct, there should not be a problem.

Michael · Post by **Michael** » Thu May 26, 2005 1:15 am

Great, I'll give a whirl!

Thanks Stealth!

HoBoZ · Post by **HoBoZ** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 2:34 pm

I don't mean to hijack this tread, but I did not want to start a new topic about the same thing.

Here is my situation;
I am a sysop at a website and we have a Unrealircd /w anope services running. All is fine with the current setup. But it is hosted in Malaysia and the hosting server has been going down quite a lot lately. I have set up a backup Unrealircd /w anope services server here where I live.

So we are thinking about linking the two servers together. My question is if the main server in Malayia goes down, so do the services. Is it possible to run both IRCD servers with services at the same time and is this going to create any problems? So in case the main one does go down the services on the other one takes over the job.

Or would it be better to run the services on the main and disable the services on the backup server? I hope I explained this correctly.

Thanks in advance and sorry if this has already been touched upon, but I have found nothing about this situation yet ( I am still looking)

Wiggle · Post by **Wiggle** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 3:46 pm

You would probably run into problems. If the services pseudo clients (NickServ, ChanServ, etc) are named the same, it's likely there'll be a nick collission when the second services server joins. And if they are named the same, you'll probably just get "Server already exists".

So the best way is to have backup services set ready to boot up in read-only mode, and to bring them up when the main services go down.

(I guess it could work if your services package has the ability to bring up two servers with different names and when the one notices when the pseudo-clients from the other one are gone (services split, go down, or whatever) it'd bring up its own. But I don't think there's a services package that does that right now, and there's some disadvantages of that. You'd also have to change your services aliases type etc, but that's beyond the scope of your question

.)

Regards.

Michael · Post by **Michael** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 7:58 pm

I believe the best way to do this is to have services built and ready on the backup system and then use something like unison to sync the database files. That way if they do go down you will have the current database to work with. To the users it will seem as if nothing ever happened if the primary system went down.

It would be relatively simple to create a script that would detect if the services are still running and have it launch your services on the backup if it detected the normal services weren't available. Heck there is probably a script or module that already exists to perform this function, but I haven't looked for one yet either.

I'm actually planning to do this for our services as well and would be the way I'd go about it.

Take care,

Stealth · Post by **Stealth** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:00 pm

The solution to your problem is simple: Run the services on the most stable connection. If you run the services on the backup server, and link the malaysian server to it, when the malaysian server goes down, your users will still have services. Chances are when a server goes down, there is no one able to connect to it anyway, so running the services on the backup server and linking the malaysian server to it is the best way to go.

Michael · Post by **Michael** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:04 pm

Actually, for your situation HoBoZ, what Stealth has said makes the most sense.

See ya,

HoBoZ · Post by **HoBoZ** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:27 pm

Thanks to all who have replied.

I think Stealth is right about running the services on the backup server. I will have to discuss this with the owner of the Malayian IRCd and see what we can work out. As for the user database, what would be my best bet on moving the user database to my backup server? Would the import and export modules work for this?

Thanks in advance.

PS..
Sorry if I hijacked this thread.

Don't hold that agaisnt me. LOL

Edit:
I just looked at the export and import module readme files and they only say the export glines, klines, zlines (global & local) and klines. Hmm..
any suggestions?

Stealth · Post by **Stealth** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:34 pm

All you need to do to move the user databases over, is shutdown the services, and copy the database files from the old services, and place them in the proper spot on the new services.

With Anope, that is simply the *.db files in the main services directory. Just copy those the the main services directory to the new services installation. As an option, you can copy the backup files (located in the backups directory). Take the newest set, and rename the files to take the dates out of the filename.

HoBoZ · Post by **HoBoZ** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:37 pm

Thanks Stealth, I am good to go now. Just have to talk things over with the other owner.

Thanks for all your help Stealth, Michael and Wiggle.