IRCD

NAME

SYNOPSIS

ircd

[-a] [-c] [-i] [-o] [-q] [-t] [-d directory] [-f configfile] [-x debuglevel] [-h hostname] [-p portnum]

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.  

OPTIONS

-d directory

This option tells the server to change to that directory and use that as a reference point when opening ircd.conf and other startup files.

-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.

-a

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

-t

Instructs the server to direct debugging output to standard output.

-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).

-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.

-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.

-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.

-q

Using the -q 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.

-h hostname

Allows the user to manually set the server name at startup. The default name is hostname.domainname. -p portname Specifies the port where the daemon should start waiting for connections. This overrides the default which is given at compile time.

If you plan to connect your ircd server to an existing Irc-Network,