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ChatSpike Migrates to Atheme IRC Services

“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.”

EFnet Enables SSL Connections

“EFnet has recently enabled SSL connections on a select few servers,” EFnet admin Taliz wrote to IRC-Junkie. “irc.efnet.ch, irc.pte.hu and irc.blessed.net are allowing SSL clients to connect on ports 9999, 7000, 7001 and 6697.”

The developers of the Ratbox IRCd added it to the code after continuous requests. “The option to support SSL connections is part of ratbox 3, which is currently in beta stage. Hence only a few servers support it yet, namely irc.efnet.ch, irc.pte.hu & irc.blessed.net. However irc.eversible.com is running a special solution also accepting SSL, using the older ratbox 2. Also irc.efnet.ch and irc.pte.hu are running separate ircds for the SSL clients, to not disrupt regular clients while bugfixing etc.”

According to Taliz, around 200 clients are using the feature right now, but its growing as the word is spreading around.

Finally, Taliz ends with a small warning. “Until ratbox 3 goes “stable”, you may expect more frequent restarts due to bugs being worked out.”

AustNet Moves to InspIRCd

After being based on a modified IRCu for a long period of time, AustNet moves to an InspIRCd based IRCd. IRC-Junkie asks AustNet’s Praetorian about the how, why and what of this change.

“The previous IRCd that was in use, Austhex 7, had served AustNet for quite a long period,” Praetorian explains. “it was modified quite a bit, to accommodate things that were unique to AustNet, such as “helpers”, and virtual world, which when implemented, was quite unique for its time.”

Being so heavily modified it also offered serious challenges in the last days of its use. Sections of its code became so outdated modern compilers had problems compiling the code.

The decision was made for a move to InspIRCd. In the spirit of the old IRCd again changes have been made to the IRCd. However, “the number of changes to the standard codebase is quite small, and this assist us in being able to keep tracking against their SVN/Releases.”

Most of the changes are in the form of modules, some of which are embraced by the InspIRCd people and will be put into the core IRCd in a future release.

The new IRCd (named Austhex 8) is received well by AustNet’s users because of long awaited features. Praetorian explains: “Registered Nick modes, and preventing of being messaged by unregistered users (to prevent spam), Dynamic connection allowances to limit at the IRCd on a network level, the number of clients allows from an IP/Subnet/Mask (many IRCd’s tend to do this at a services level, where all clients end up killed, or even glined for going over. This functionality removes this, and simply denies the connection).”

The change took a bit longer then the network initially expected. One reason of the delay was a changing approach to the change from the network, the other “due to some less-that-mature code that was in the Inspircd releases.”

Part of this was due to syncing the “fork” against an old release of InspIRCd which saw many changes over time. “it was a necessary evil in order to accommodate a number of very important changes.”

The post with the announcement and practical changes for its userbase can be found here.

Yeah Right >:)

Obviously that was a lame attempt at an April Fool’s joke >:)

Naturally IRC-Junkie wasn’t the only one attempting:

InspIRCd announced The WOW Starts Now! The project would turn commercial with paid version ranging from Home Basic to Commercial. A free version named Basic would remain available. W00t explained: “It will continue to be available free for those of the world who cannot afford to pay for licencing. It includes an executable file built for redhat 5.1 on the 286 architecture with egcs 1.0 which may or may not work. YMMV.”

Undernet announced over WALLUSERS the merger with QuakeNet: “DuCkTaPe $ In 5 minutes undernet will be going offline for approximately 8 hours to facilitate our merger with quakenet. All quakenet channels will be given existing Undernet channels. Sorry for the inconvenience and we’ll be back soon.” Naturally over wallops some user comments were shared like concerns over loosing their channels and others.

QuakeNet announced a new sponsorship setup, Meeb on the network website: “From today all users who use our channel service Q will have to agree to our new terms and conditions which state your details on QuakeNet are solely owned by us. We will be setting your hostname to paid adverts. This is a unique advertising model allowing you to pay for as many ‘impressions’ as suits your marketing budget. Your advertisements will be in shown as the host names of users on the network, allowing for a subtle yet powerful delivery of your message to an active and rich demographic.”

Got any others? Add them below as a comment!

QuakeNet Overhauls Q

The QuakeNet IRC network did a major overhaul of its major channel service Q.

“As many of you have noticed we’ve just upgraded our main channel service, Q, to a new version,” meeb announced on the QuakeNet website.

The upgrade consists of a complete rewrite of the bot and includes all old functionality and adds some new ones. Channels who previously used L have been upgraded to the new Q as well.

Bot response messages to commands have been changed. IRC-Junkie tried to ask QuakeNet whether problems have risen with scripts depending on these messages but we have had no reply.

New functionality includes channel statistics, channel- user- and personal-flags, new give owner command and lots more which can be found described in detail here