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Category Archives: Network Addons

ratbox-services release version 1.2.3

ratbox-services, a services package for use with IRCd-ratbox is now available as version 1.2.3 in their stable tree.

ratbox services logo

ratbox services logo

They are “highly configurable, with nearly all options being set in a config that can be rehashed rather than set at compile time. It also uses the SQLite database backend, which works as a database interface to a normal file, meaning no seperate database software must be running”.

The new release has some feature additions for their channel listing service, ALIS, which now lets you search for channels with the +S mode (SSL-only channels). This release also fixes a +S/ALIS related “minor buffer overflow” at the same time.

Besides a small number of other bugfixes there also was a problem fixed with permanent bans set via chanserv that weren’t applying to users joining said channel.

The announcement on their mailinglist says that “everyone running ratbox-services-1.2.2 should upgrade to this version” so grab the download from here and perform the upgrade ;)

ratbox-services version 1.2.2 released

ratbox-services, a services package for use with IRCd-ratbox is now available as version 1.2.2 in their stable tree.

ratbox services logo

ratbox services logo

They are “highly configurable, with nearly all options being set in a config that can be rehashed rather than set at compile time. It also uses the SQLite database backend, which works as a database interface to a normal file, meaning no seperate database software must be running”.

The new version, aside from various bugfixes, also contains a fix for a potential user-triggerable crashbug.

According to the changelog, this crash could be triggered by “a user changing their email address with userserv” so this is a recommended upgrade if you are running these services.

The download for version 1.2.2 can be found here.

Anope stable 1.8.3 is out

The Anope project just announced the availability of another release in their stable tree, version 1.8.3

New in this release is the official support for InspIRCd version 1.2 which the services have been lacking before.

Other than that, lots of bugs as well as a few memory leaks have been fixed and 3 language files have been updated (French, Turkish and German).

Developer chaz writes in the announcement that they have “taken the decision to move to Visual Studio 2008 for our precompiled Windows versions” and that “this means that if you do not already have 2008 Runtimes you will need those but as several module authors have already moved to this version you may already have them”.

He cautions to “take a known good back up and perform testing in a testnet environment with your current databases and modules before considering upgrading your live network. We would however recommend anyone using any versions of 1.6, 1.7 or 1.8 to update as soon as possible”.

Closing his announcement he writes: “We would like to extend our thanks to the networks which helped us test this new version and would welcome anyone else to get in touch to help us form a ‘Release Testing Team’ in order to provide a more structured and efficient testing and release pattern”.

The downloads can be found here and the full changelog can be viewed here.

IRCServices version 5.1.21 released

Andrew Church just released IRCServices version 5.1.21 which now officially are at their “end of life” and are no longer developed besides for bugfixing.

Although this comes as no surprise as Andrew has announced that beforehand it is still sad to see the services he maintained for 14 years now go stale.

In his last posting on the services mailing list he writes that he’s now “taking down the Services website and mailing lists shortly following this announcement” but also notes that he will “continue to accept reports of bugs which significantly affect security or stability and release updates to version 5.1 as necessary” but that there “will be no further updates to version 5.0 in any case, even for security-related issues”

The changelog for this last release is rather short and only has minor bugfixes:

2010/01/01      Updated documentation to reflect end-of-life status.
2009/11/10      Fixed a few bugs in importing XML data, and removed empty channel access list entries from exported XML data. Reported by Charalampos Pournaris
2009/11/07      Fixed minor memory leak and failure to apply CSAutokickMax setting in ChanServ AKICK ADD.  Reported by Charalampos Pournaris
2009/11/07      Fixed cosmetic bugs in some LIST commands and potential leakage of memory contents to database files.  Reported by Charalampos Pournaris

Closing his announcement he thanks “you all once again for your support over the years. Best wishes, Andrew Church”

Best wishes to you too from here :)

I’d also like to wish all readers a Happy New Year 2010 from IRC-Junkie!

Mibbit webchat updates

Mibbit, the popular webchat client for IRC, once again made a few updates to their service.

In the announcement they write that, due their tremendous growth, have “expanded from having a single backend for Widgets, to having 4 backend servers” which “also gives us failover, and an easy way to update backends without having to kick everyone off”.

Since all backends use the same IP, IRC networks that use Mibbit for their webchat don’t have to change anything.

The new features that were introduced with this update is WebSocket support, a feature currently only available in Google Chrome:

WebSocket is a system that allows a bidirectional tcp connection between browser and server. Mibbit can use this in place of Comet, in order to cut bandwidth and provide a faster experience for users. WebSocket is currently supported in latest Chrome dev channel. If you haven’t tried it yet, Chrome is an awesome webbrowser, especially for webapps like Mibbit.

Also, a lag-meter has been built in which “shows the current lag between your browser and the mibbit server” and even though this doesn’t measure the lag from mibbit to the IRC network they “plan to implement some lag features for IRC later on.” The lag is “logged on the Mibbit server in order for us to improve the user experience” and “if we find that lag from browsers in the UK is high, we may setup a UK backend”.

Closing the announcement they write

Once again, thanks for your understanding when we do have to restart a backend, we’re nearing a time now where we can do complete rolling updates and not have to kick anyone off.

It’s a real privilege to work on something that is used by so many people, and we really do appreciate your use of Mibbit. If you have any thoughts, ideas or gripes, please do feel free to catch me on irc.mibbit.net.

Happy holidays Mibbitians! :D

Happy holidays from here too =)