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Quassel IRC client updated to 0.6.1

Developer Sputnick of the Quassel project just posted an announcement for version 0.6.1 of their IRC client.

Quassel IRC client Logo

Quassel IRC client Logo

In case you wonder where the announcement of 0.6.0 went, he writes that they skipped it because “shortly after tagging, we’ve discovered two serious bugs in that version. One could make the monolithic client try to select the PostgreSQL backend rather than SQlite; the other would lead to a crash on startup in some setups”.

In the announcement, he cites the following as the most notable new features:

  • Completely reworked client/core connection featuring the long-awaited reconnection and Solid support as well as a streamlined UI
  • Support for the new DBus-based system tray of KDE and, in some distros, Gnome (StatusNotifier spec)
  • Improved notification handling
  • Support for inputting formatted (colored/bold/…) text
  • SASL auth support (replaces NickServ e.g. in Freenode)
  • Several new languages and improved translations for already existing ones
  • Build system improvements

Version 0.7.x is already in development but he says that they will “maintain the 0.6.x branch in feature and string freeze at least until 0.7.0 is released” which means they’ll backport bugfixes where it makes sense but won’t introduce new features in the 0.6.x branch to “make packagers of freeze-loving distros happy”.

The complete changelog can be found here and the download can be obtained from here.

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InspIRCd 1.2.7 stable is out, fixes DoS bugs

The InspIRCd team released version 1.2.7 of their stable branch yesterday which fixes 2 critical bugs that can result in DoS conditions, so an upgrade is advised.

The first crash that has been fixed is triggerable when a remote server has the same name as a local one which possibly crashes the linking IRCd. This bug was squashed by developer danieldg in this commit.

The second bug can lead to a Denial of Service condition due to memory exhaustion which is possible since ban exception masks weren’t limited in length and numbers according to MAXBANS.

This has been rectified by this commit and they are now restricted to 250 characters in length and adhere to the MAXBANS directive.

The download for InspIRCd 1.2.7 can be found here, the whole commit-log can be viewed here.

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KVIrc 4.0 RC3 is available for testing

HelLViS69 of the KVIrc project just announced that release candidate 3 of their IRC client in the 4.0 branch is available for testing.

The changelog sounds pretty interesting and the client seems to have gotten lots of new features and more than 200 bugs have been fixed since RC1.

In the announcement, developer HelLViS69 lists the new features in this build, such as an “automagical wizard to create theme packages, the new class editor (no more classes in aliases!), the smart nick coloring which permits to select your favourite fore/background color”.

But how about something revolutionary? Developer CtrlAltCa has something in store for us:

DCC Video Chat – yes, you read that right and no, this is no April Fools joke ;) But a picture says more than 1000 words:

KVIRC DCC Video Chat

KVIRC DCC Video Chat

The picture shown is from an early implementation of DCC Video and only uses SJPEG so the video quality should be much better with the current Ogg Theora codec. Sadly, this feature is currently only available for Linux users of KVIrc since it uses the V4L/V4Lv2 backends.

Developer CtrlAltCa however says that there will be a cross-platform implementation using Phonon as its backend, so multi-platform DCC Video Chat will be just a matter of time.

The complete changelog for KVIrc 4.0 RC3 can be found here and the download can found here.

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Yaaic Android IRC client 0.3 is available

Yaaic developer pocmo just announced that he released version 0.3 of his Android IRC client which comes with quite a few enhancements and bugfixes – so lets have a look.

The first thing that immediately grabs the attention – for those that don’t follow the projects Twitter feed – is the addition of the new logo:

Yaaic Logo

Yaaic Logo

But there have been many under-the-hood improvements as well: You can now choose the encoding on a per-server basis and are not bound to the default UTF-8 as in the previous version. This version is also the first to support SSL encrypted connections but pocmo warns that the TrustManager currently will accept every certificate, valid or not.

Furthermore, this version is now able to connect to networks that run InspIRCd with the module m_antibear loaded which sends a numeric certain clients can’t handle – up to now, this also prevented Yaaic from connecting to them.

New features and commands that have been added in this release are /away, /whois and /help, which only gives an overview of all available commands at the moment, a facility to get a more detailed help on individual commands is planned for a future release.

The overall behaviour of the client has been improved – Highlights, connects and disconnects are now shown as notifications in the notification bar and in the event of a disconnect you’re asked if you want to reconnect, provided the app is running in the foreground. Speaking of running in the foreground: you may now suspend the app and it will keep running and stay connected in the background until you return to it.

The announcement also provides us with a short teaser video which i don’t want to withhold from you:

You can find the complete changelog for Yaaic 0.3 here and the download can be grabbed from here.

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ShadowIRCd project releases 6.1.0

The ShadowIRCd project just released version 6.1.0 of their Charybdis-based IRCd, just little over a month after the release of version 6.0.0.

The new release adds a few new features, configuration options and “massive helpfile updates”.

The developer team implemented a server-side /CYCLE (also called /HOP in some clients) command which parts and rejoins the user from the channel he specifies.

A lot of management-commands like those pertaining to modules (like MODLOAD) can now be executed remotely, remote stopping or restarting the IRCd through DIE and RESTART has been introduced as well.

Configuration options like a settable timeout for ident checking have been added, static QUIT and the removal of PART messages are now an option too. The flood protection for opers can now fully be turned off instead of just increasing the limit by 4 times like before – the changelog however warns to be “extremely careful” since this option allows to “flood channels/users”.

Another feature worth mentioning is the addition of HELPCHAN / HELPURL: When those are configured a user doing /QUOTE HELP will be pointed to the networks help channel or a website whereas he otherwise would get just the default help index.

The full changelog can be viewed here and the download can be obtained from here.

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