Real Basic Stuff

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 2:17 pm

Hey everyone, i'm a total newbie to your forum and to unrealircd. I've got some very basic questions. I've been browsing the site, and i'm not done surfing it, but i wanted to post and get some info from some people on the forum.

I'm looking for an IRC daemon that will allow me to run my own chatserver with the full line of things like nickserv, chanserv, etc., and one which i wouldn't be required to connect to any other servers ( i want to be independent for now ). I dont want to be hampered with limitations on the amount of users (as many users as i want) and i don't want an irc daemon that's gonna have certain features turned off. Making donations is fine by me, if it means full use of the code to do as i want with no limitations on my server. So my question is...

Have i found this in Unreal IRCD??

codemastr · Post by **codemastr** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 3:46 pm

Services are a seperate program. Other than that, everything you said describes almost every IRCd. As for user limits, that, depends. On Windows, Unreal is limited to about 1000 connections maximum. That's just because of the way Windows is. On *nix, you're limited to how ever many the system allows you.

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 4:42 pm

Thanks codemastr. I'm aware of the limitations windows gives us. Good ol' Bill Gates, heh.

I'm looking to run unreal on a windows platform only temporarly, until i get my linux server built in a few weeks.

I haven't seen too many windows ircd's. Are there any issues regarding this one that i should be aware of before i jump into it (windows or unix)?

Any advice you can give a newbie? Any places of study, any pages on this website worth looking at in depth?

aquanight · Post by **aquanight** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 5:29 pm

Ares wrote:I haven't seen too many windows ircd's.

That's because:

Windows isn't the best operating system for servers.
Windows can be unstable some times. Unstable OS == Unstable server.
As codemastr said, Windows is limited to just over 1000 concurrent connections, including server links (you will have one server-to-server link if you are running services).
Windows doesn't have a reliable way to ensure that server software remains running. Unreal can be run as a service, and automatically restarted on crash, but that's not to say SCM will always be on the ball about it. Sometimes you will need to call upon Telnet Server to bail you out when you're in a pickle .

Windows will make an okay temporary server, but for serious loads, you may want to consider sticking with *nix. Of course, there probably are some real-life servers that run Windows (eBay, M$, and others).

Ares wrote:Any advice you can give a newbie? Any places of study, any pages on this website worth looking at in depth?

I would suggest that you read the documentation (but I'll go out on a limb and assume you've already done so

). Also, the IRC RFC(s) would be good to look at. Try Googling for 'RFC 1459' which is the original IRC protocol. There are also some more recent versions of this document. Unfortunately, none of the current RFCs on IRC describe Unreal to the letter, but standards only exist to be broken

.

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 6:54 pm

Already know about all the probs with windows LoL. Like i said, i'm building a linux system soon and looking to use that as a permanent server.

Doesn't Ebay use linux? I've got it written down somewhere from way back when i was researching servers and the history of unix/linux. Don't remember exactly what they use though.

I checked out some RFC 1459 stuff. It basically reads like chinese and that's pretty bad because i'm a programmer. I need to find some stuff that reads better from a site that explains stuff more straighforwardly instead of all the cryptic hoopla. The whole RFC thing is somewhat new to me, although i've been on IRC and using/scripting IRC for the last 8 years.

Definitely planned to do more research on this. Thanks for the suggestions. And no.. i didn't read much documentation on Unreal yet. I'm still having problems with the website... i can't even access the pages other than the forum here. Maybe i'm going to the wrong address. The .org addy isn't doing a thing for me.

katsklaw · Post by **katsklaw** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 10:04 pm

I too believe eBay is on *nix .. and to some peoples surprise M$ also uses their fair share of *nix servers too

The whole RFC thing is somewhat new to me, although i've been on IRC and using/scripting IRC for the last 8 years.

If you use mIRC you can type:

Code: Select all

/debug @debug

This will output the raw IRC code before it's parsed by mIRC. I have found that it is *very* helpful when debuging scripts. It also helped me understand RFC1459 better as well.

ciao

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 10:12 pm

Yeah microsoft has some linux servers i read about in one of my books. No doubt even they realize a good thing when they see it.

Thanks for the tip on /debug .

katsklaw · Post by **katsklaw** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 11:51 pm

np, /debug can also dump to txt files:

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/debug filename.txt

dumping to text can be useful if you step away from your PC.. like while at work ... since it's all raw code .. it logs even the numerics and syntax (This makes a more complete and up-to-date numeric list, sorry Jeepster). I completed an IRCop SNOTICE filter for Bahamut and for Unreal in less than 30 days using this method.

aquanight · Post by **aquanight** » Sat May 01, 2004 3:56 am

katsklaw wrote:If you use mIRC you can type:
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/debug @debug

On mIRC, this little scriptlet will even catch the initial login stuff (PASS, USER, NICK, etc):

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on ^*:LOGON:*:{
  window -e @ $+ $server
  debug -pt @ $+ $server
}

Note the little /window command. I used that so the debug window would have an edit box for you to type in commands. The -pt switches to the /debug command will make it wordwrap so you don't have commands cutting off at the screen edges, and will also make it obey your timestamp settings so you can see when the commands come in. Because mIRC is multi-server, I used the servername for the debug window name instead of just @debug. Of course, you could use whatever you like.