setting up znc on centos

I used to use NetBSD on a PC that was powered by MMX 133MHz few years ago. I had a IRC proxy on it, but the PC was damaged by thunder and I remembered I did not recover the proxy.

OK, so let's install a IRC proxy, on VPS this time. I heard znc is better than tiarra right now, so I'm going to use it. I can't recall what proxy I used to use, I guess the aging process caused it :-|

We can install znc by yum on CentOS. It comes from epel.

$ sudo yum -y install znc
...(略)...
Installed:
  znc.x86_64 0:1.2-1.el6                                                                                                       

Complete!

Now znc is installed. We can run by simply type:

$ znc

then it runs as a background process. We must configure it before we run it. Just run it with a option --makeconf, then we can set the configuration interactively.

$ znc --makeconf
[ ok ] Checking for list of available modules... 
[ ** ] Building new config
...(略)...

Well, we can set the config as we want. znc can have more than one users. One znc process can accept more than one connection from more than one user, more than one location each. The latest version can set more than one network (IRC server) for each user. It means you can use only one user to connect more than one IRC servers. We configure like this:

[ ?? ] What port would you like ZNC to listen on? (1025 to 65535): 6667 
       ↑the port that the client program uses to connect to znc.

[ ?? ] Would you like ZNC to listen using SSL? (yes/no) [yes]: yes
       ↑if you want to use SSL, say yes.

[ ?? ] Would you like to create a new pem file now? (yes/no) [yes]: yes
[ ok ] Writing Pem file [/home/iwa/.znc/znc.pem]... 
       ↑say yes to create pem file.

[ ?? ] Would you like ZNC to listen using ipv6? (yes/no) [no]: no
       ↑we no use ipv6

[ ?? ] Listen Host (Blank for all ips): 
       ↑leave it blank

[ ** ] -- Network Modules --
...(略)...keep no for all modules, you can add them later if you need it.

[ ** ] Now we need to set up a user...
       ↑creating use

[ ** ] 
[ ?? ] Username (AlphaNumeric): hoge
[ ?? ] Enter Password: 
[ ?? ] Confirm Password: 
       ↑user and password that the client program use to connect to znc.

[ ?? ] Would you like this user to be an admin? (yes/no) [yes]: yes
       ↑if the user is admin, you can configure znc from the client that is connected to.

[ ?? ] Nick [hoge]: kenic
[ ?? ] Alt Nick [kenic_]: kenip
       ↑nick to use on IRC.

[ ** ] -- IRC Servers --
[ ** ] -- Channels --
       ↑we omit all, you can add more than one networks.

[ ** ] To connect to this ZNC you need to connect to it as your IRC server
[ ** ] using the port that you supplied.  You have to supply your login info
[ ** ] as the IRC server password like this: user/network:pass.
[ ** ] 
[ ** ] Try something like this in your IRC client...
[ ** ] /server  +16668 iwa:
[ ** ] And this in your browser...
[ ** ] https://:16668/
       ↑this is an attention.

[ ?? ] Launch ZNC now? (yes/no) [yes]: yes
       ↑type yes to run it now.

the result configulation is now written to ~/.znc/configs/znc.conf. if you want to edit it manually, do like this:

1) /znc SaveConfig on a IRC client that is connected to znc.
2) edit ~/.znc/configs/znc.conf
3) /znc Rehash on a client.

If we set up more than one networks, we must specify a network to use from a client. There is two ways: one is that you can choose network by typing /znc jumpnetowrk from a client. The another way is that you set up the client with a password /:, it tells znc what sever the client want to connect is. This is a bit tricky. You may find this instruction if you read the output of --makeconf carefully.

There are variety of modules, "log" is nice for the first step. We can set the log module from the client, just by typing /znc loadmodule log. It will start logging to files specified channel-date under ~/.znc/users/hoge/moddata/log/. It's very convenient :-)

We can learn more by /znc help, in the case we need it.

Reference

1. tiarraをやめてzncにしてみた, Perlとかmemoとか日記とか。