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IRC

Redbrick InspIRCd

In 2016/2017 we began work to move to InspIRCd. This was due to the complications in ircd-hybrid and how old it was. These complications stopped new netsocs joining us so we all agreed to move irc. $ 4 years later after multiple attempts we had not migrated. Until TCD decided to shutdown their server breaking the network.

We run Inspircd v3 on Metharme. InspIRCd's docs can be found here for configuration specifics.

IRC is available at irc.redbrick.dcu.ie on port 6697. SSL is required for connection, we do not support non-SSL. When connecting from a redbrick server a user will be automatically logged in. If connecting from an external server a user must pass their password on login.

For the purpose of external peering of other servers the port 7001 is exposed as well. Similarly to clients we only support SSL on this port.

For docs on connecting and using an IRC client please refer to the wiki.

Installation

InspIRCd is installed with Nix. There is no Nix package for InspIRCd so we compile a specific git tag from source. See Nix package for details on how it is compiled. Given we only support SSL and require LDAP, we need to enable both at compile time.

Configuration

InspIRCd's configuration is in Nix here. This config will be converted to xml on disc.

Important Configuration

  • oper is a list of admin users on the irc server. Their OPER password will need to be manually hashed with hmac-sha256, and placed in a secret on the server to be read in by inspircd.
  • ldapwhitelist is a list of cidr addresses that do no require authentication. The list consists of Redbrick public and private addresses as well as oldsoc.
  • link is a list of all servers we peer with including the anope services server that runs on the same box.

oldsoc.net

oldsoc.net is a server run by old TCD netsocers. All the users on it are the remaining TCD associates following the shutdown of TCD IRCd. This server is maintained by its own users and has explicit permission to join IRC without LDAP auth.

Anope

Redbrick runs Anope services for the entire network. As with inspircd we compile from source. Refer to anopes github docs for configuration specifics.

Our current Anope is configured with standard mods of chanserv, nickserv and operserv. All config is in here.

Anope stores all info in a custom db file on disk.

Discord Bridge - butlerx

We run a bridge between the Redbrick Discord and irc. The configuration for this is here.

The bridge adds all users from discord with the suffix _d2 and all irc users appear as them self but tagged as a bot in discord. Not all discord channels are on IRC, the config above contains a mapping of irc channels to discord channels id's. This needs to be manually updated to add more channels.