IRCD(8)

NAME
ircd - The Internet Relay Chat Program Server

SYNOPSIS

ircd
    [ -abcioqst ] [ -f configfile ] [ -x debuglevel ] [ -h hostname ] [ -T tunefile ] [ -p mode ]

ircd
    -v

DESCRIPTION

ircd is the server (daemon) program for the Internet Relay Chat Program. The ircd is a server in that its function is to "serve" the client program irc(1) with messages and commands. All commands and user messages are passed directly to the ircd for processing and relaying to other ircd sites. The irc(1) program depends upon there being an ircd server running somewhere (either on your local UNIX site or a remote ircd site) so that it will have somewhere to connect to and thus allow the user to begin talking to other users. ircd will reread its configuration file whenever it received a hangup signal, SIGHUP. Sending an interrupt signal to ircd process will cause it to restart.

OPTIONS

-a  Instructs the server to automatically die off if it loses all it's clients.

-b  If the ircd.tune file is corrupted, by default the server will not start. This option will make the server start anyways, with the default values (ignoring the corrupted file).

-c  This flag must be given if you are running ircd from /dev/console or any other situation where fd 0 isnt a tty and you want the server to fork off and run in the background. This needs to be given if you are starting ircd from an rc (such as /etc/rc.local) file.

-i  The server was started by inetd and it should start accepting connections from standard input. The following inetd.conf-line could be used to start up ircd automatically when needed:

ircd stream tcp wait irc /etc/ircd ircd -i
    allows inetd to start up ircd on request.

-o  Starts up a local ircdaemon. Standard input can be used to send IRC commands to the daemon. The user logging in from standard input will be given operator privileges on this local ircd. If ircd is a setuid program, it will call setuid(getuid()) before going to local mode. This option can be used in inetd.conf to allow users to open their own irc clients by simply connecting their clients to the correct ports. For example:

irc stream tcp nowait irc /etc/ircd ircd \-f/etc/ircd.conf \-o
    allows users connecting to irc port (specified in /etc/services) to start up their own ircdaemon. The configuration file should be used to check from which hosts these connections are allowed from. This option also turns on the autodie option -a.

-q  Using this option stops the server from doing DNS lookups on all the servers in your ircd.conf file when it boots. This can take a lengthy amount of time if you have a large number of servers and they are not all close by.

-s  When this option is specified, iauth will not be started. This means that the IRC daemon will perform "ident lookups" (RFC 1413) internally to attempt to authenticate incoming connections. No other authentication mechanism will be used.

-t  Instructs the server to direct debugging output to standard output.

-f filename
    Specifies the ircd.conf file to be used for this ircdaemon. The option is used to override the default ircd.conf given at compile time.

-x #
    Defines the debuglevel for ircd. The higher the debuglevel, the more stuff gets directed to debugging file (or standard output if -t option was used as well).

-h hostname
    Allows the user to manually set the server name at startup. The default name is hostname.domainname.

-p mode
    Specify whether the server should enable built-in protections against various type of user abuse that is commonly found on big public networks. Possible modes are strict (default), on and off. The strict option enables the protections, and refuses to establish a link to a server not running with this option. This is useful to force all servers on an IRC network to enable them.

-T tunefile
    Specifies the ircd.tune file to be used for this ircdaemon. The option is used to override the default ircd.tune given at compile time.

-v  This option prevents the server from starting, and dumps some information about the version instead.

If you plan to connect your ircd server to an existing Irc-Network,
you will need to alter your local IRC CONFIGURATION FILE (typically named
    "ircd.conf") so that it will accept and make connections to other ircd servers. This file contains the hostnames, Network Addresses, and sometimes passwords for connections to other ircds around the world. Because description of the actual file format of the "ircd.conf" file is beyond the scope of this document, please refer to the file INSTALL in the IRC source files documentation directory.

BOOTING THE SERVER: The ircd server can be started as part of the UNIX boot procedure or just by placing the server into Unix Background. Keep in mind that if it is *not* part of your UNIXES Boot-up procedure then you will have to manually start the ircd server each time your UNIX is rebooted. This means if your UNIX is prone to crashing or going for for repairs a lot it would make sense to start the ircd server as part of your UNIX bootup procedure. In some cases the irc(1) will automatically attempt to boot the ircd server if the user is on the SAME UNIX that the ircd is supposed to be running on. If the irc(1) cannot connect to the ircd server it will try to start the server on it's own and will then try to reconnect to the newly booted ircd server.

EXAMPLE
    tolsun% ircd

Places ircd into UNIX Background and starts up the server for use. Note: You do not have to add the "&" to this command, the program will automatically detach itself from tty.

    tolsun% ircd -v
    ircd 2.9.3 AaCDEfFHiIkMsu_V1
            zlib not used
            Tue Apr 1 1997 at 20:17:50 EDT #1

This indicates that this binary is the version 2.9.3 of the software. AaCDEfFHiIkMsu_V1 are the compile time options which were used. This binary does not support compression of server-server links (does not use zlib) and was compiled on April the 1st.

COPYRIGHT
(c) 1988,1989 University of Oulu, Computing Center, Finland,

(c) 1988,1989 Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, Finland

(c) 1988,1989,1990,1991 Jarkko Oikarinen

For full COPYRIGHT see LICENSE file with IRC package.

FILES
 /etc/utmp
 "ircd.conf"

SEE ALSO
iauth(8) irc(1) ircdwatch(8)

BUGS
None... ;-) if somebody finds one, please send mail to ircd-bugs@irc.org

AUTHOR
Jarkko Oikarinen, currently jto@tolsun.oulu.fi, manual page written by Jeff Trim, jtrim@orion.cair.du.edu, later modified by jto@tolsun.oulu.fi.