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Atheme IRC Services 5.2.0 released

phrozen77 — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:13:13 +0000

The Atheme project just tagged version 5.2.0 of their IRC services package which contains quite a few interesting changes from the previous version, 5.1.1.

Atheme IRC Services Logo

Atheme 5.2.0 introduces a new database format called “OpenSEX” which is available as a technology preview in this release and will be mandatory once Atheme 6.0 is released. According to developer nenolod, the revised format was introduced to “remove legacy stuff and provide an extendable API“.

HostServ gained the OFFER command which allows opers to – surprise – offer vHosts to their users. All of ChanServ and NickServs SET commands are now seperate modules which can be loaded individually, allowing networks fine-grained choosing of which functionality they provide to their users.

When users register, NickServ can now make use of CrackLib which checks for weak passwords and either warns the user or even prevents registering when it determined the password isn’t secure.

The converter for databases from IRCServices has been improved and now is “generally more robust”. The rate-limiting feature has been expanded and now supports limiting commands to HostServ/Request, ChanServ/Register and NickServ/Register to prevent the services server from being overloaded.

The complete changelog can be found here and the download is available here.

Atheme IRC Services 5.2.0 released is a post from: IRC-Junkie.org - IRC News

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Atheme services packages releases version 5.1.0

phrozen77 — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:44:11 +0000

The team developing the Atheme IRC services just tagged version 5.1.0 of their services package.

The new release brings a lot of bugfixes, feature additons and enhancements as well as a slew of modules that have been contributed to the project by other developers.

Also, a few changes have been made to the available IRCd protocols, mostly improvements and additions concerning InspIRCd support but also a new module which provides support for the Ithildin IRCd has been added. Support for the legacy hyperion daemon, previously used on freenode, has been dropped and support for ShadowIRCd has been updated.

Various helpfiles for the available *Serv’s have been added and updated, the same goes for all the added contributed modules. A taint subsystem has been added which “allows developers to programatically define unsupportable conditions”.

SaslServ has gained the AUTHCOOKIE SASL method which allows for integration with Iris, an AJAX IRC client that is a fork of and aims to be a drop-in replacement for qwebirc which is “designed to integrate with the Atheme IRC platform (including atheme-web) and with IRCv3 client protocol compliance in mind”.

NickServ was expanded with CERTFP support which allows for password-less authentication via SSL certificate fingerprints. The converter for Anope databases has been improved to support newer versions of Anope and has been reworked to be a bit more robust when handling encrypted passwords.

The download can be found here and the complete changelog is available here.

Atheme services packages releases version 5.1.0 is a post from: IRC-Junkie.org - IRC News

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Atheme / InspIRCd m_invisible brouhaha

phrozen77 — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:53:19 +0000

Those who closely follow either projects development will have noticed a few “odd” looking commits to their sourcecode in the past few days.

The commits all concerned InspIRCds m_invisible module which provides similar functionality as the old mode +I in UnrealIRCd 3.1.x.

Quoting the InspIRCd wiki page about m_invisible the module

adds support for quiet (invisible) opers. A quiet oper is invisible to normal users on channels. This can be used for surveillence of botnet channels, statistics bots, etc. Note that other opers CAN see invisible opers; +Q only hides the oper from non-opers.

The brawl emerged when Atheme developer nenolod commited a few changes to the services packages that would make such a join visible to channel members by announcing that “Channel security has been compromised” because an invisible user has joined.

This commit was followed up by danieldg of the InspIRCd developer team who moved the module out of the main – and therefore by default included – modules into the seperate “inspircd-extras” repository, but only in the 2.0 beta and 2.1 pre-alpha branches.

The initial commits to Atheme have since been reverted but there now are checks for m_invisible being loaded and the services package now refuses to link if it spots the module being present.

The module, referred to as “morally unacceptable” and “not … ethical” by nenolod, has legitimate uses such as “private networks inside offices, with special uses, those do need logging and accountability, most of them even disable private messages entirely” said developer Brain when asked about his views of this whole situation. They wrote it because “users asked for the module” and his opinion is that it “should be kept, and we’re keeping it, in third party”.

Brain says to him “it’s all about choice, the choice to run the modules or not to, we aren’t going to tell people whats right and wrong” and that “people are sensible enough and educated enough to decide for themselves”.

What’s your opinion about this? Do you use m_invisible on your network? And if so, do you tell your users that such a module is loaded? Guns don’t kill, people do?

Atheme / InspIRCd m_invisible brouhaha is a post from: IRC-Junkie.org - IRC News

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Atheme IRC services release version 5

phrozen77 — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:17:32 +0000

Atheme, an IRC services package used by many mainstream networks – the largest being Freenode – is updated to version 5.0.

Aside from a host of fixes it now also provides BotServ and HostServ services.

Developer nenolod hints of another upcoming big addition: “There is also a web interface for atheme coming out on friday” but “it’s not quite done yet.”

We managed to get a preview of whats to be expected and grabbed a few screenshots of the webinterface in action:

Channel management from the web

Sending memos from the web

So, if you’re using Atheme on your network, this certainly is something to look forward to

Atheme IRC services release version 5 is a post from: IRC-Junkie.org - IRC News

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ChatSpike Migrates to Atheme IRC Services

phrozen77 — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:34:31 +0000

“ChatSpike is migrating to Atheme IRC Services (from ircservices 5 which we have been using since we started, 6 years ago)” Brain said to IRC-Junkie.

W00t explains why IRC Services no longer serves the network. “IRC services was and is a big influence on the IRC landscape, to me. It was one of the first packages to be OSS’d, it was actively developed over a long timeframe, and incorporated user feedback. It supported a wide range of IRC daemons, and was also one of the earliest packages to get modules support”

Its age was showing in the flexibility however, w00t, who is also a developer of Atheme IRC services explains: “some features have taken us hundreds of lines of code to write, including database handling and other horrific and repetitive code. Atheme has a more streamlined design that lets us tackle this in a RAD style, meaning new toys take a lot less time to get from the ideas stage to the point where our users can play with them.”

Additionally the maintainer of IRCservices Andy Church will be leaving the project soon making future updates too unsure for Chatspike’s needs.

Another reason to switch to Atheme is its better integration with the networks IRCd, InspIRCd. “In atheme [...] we can add and customize things specifically *for* ChatSpike a few light years quicker than we could in the past, new commands, new website integration features, anything becomes feasible instead of a pain in the ass.”

ChatSpike Migrates to Atheme IRC Services is a post from: IRC-Junkie.org - IRC News

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