Awesome
miniircd -- A (very) simple Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server
Description
miniircd is a small and limited IRC server written in Python. Despite its size, it is a functional alternative to a full-blown ircd for private or internal use. Installation is simple; no configuration is required.
Features
- Knows about the basic IRC protocol and commands.
- Easy installation.
- Basic SSL support.
- No configuration.
- No ident lookup (so that people behind firewalls that filter the ident port without sending NACK can connect without long timeouts).
- Reasonably secure when used with --chroot and --setuid.
Limitations
- Can't connect to other IRC servers.
- Only knows the most basic IRC commands.
- No IRC operators.
- No channel operators.
- No user or channel modes except channel key.
- No reverse DNS lookup.
- No other mechanism to reject clients than requiring a password.
Requirements
Python 3.6 or newer. Get it at https://www.python.org.
Installation
No special installation needed: Just clone the repository and execute miniircd:
git clone https://github.com/jrosdahl/miniircd.git
cd miniircd
./miniircd --help
If you do want to install miniircd, there are several options:
-
Clone the repository and copy the executable file to a directory in PATH:
git clone https://github.com/jrosdahl/miniircd.git cd miniircd cp miniircd /usr/local/bin # or some other directory in your PATH
You can then execute the program like this:
miniircd --help
-
Install miniircd as a package from the miniircd PyPI project.
You can then execute the program with
miniircd --help
or as a module like this:
python3 -m miniircd --help
Using --chroot
and --setuid
In order to use the --chroot
or --setuid
options, you must be using an OS
that supports these functions (most Unix-like systems), and you must start the
server as root. These options limit the daemon process to a small subset of the
filesystem, running with the privileges of the specified user (ideally
unprivileged) instead of the user who launched miniircd.
To create a new chroot jail for miniircd, edit the Makefile and change JAILDIR
and JAILUSER to suit your needs, then run make jail
as root. If you have a
motd file or an SSL PEM file, you'll need to put them in the jail as well:
cp miniircd.pem motd.txt /var/jail/miniircd
Remember to specify the paths for --state-dir
, --channel-log-dir
, --motd
and --ssl-pem-file
from within the jail, e.g.:
miniircd --state-dir=/ --channel-log-dir=/ --motd=/motd.txt \
--setuid=nobody --ssl-pem-file=/miniircd.pem --chroot=/var/jail/miniircd
Make sure your jail is writable by whatever user/group you are running the server as. Also, keep your jail clean. Ideally it should only contain the files mentioned above and the state/log files from miniircd. You should not place the miniircd script itself, or any executables, in the jail. In the end it should look something like this:
# ls -alR /var/jail/miniircd
.:
total 36
drwxr-xr-x 3 nobody root 4096 Jun 10 16:20 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Jun 10 18:40 ..
-rw------- 1 nobody nobody 26 Jun 10 16:20 #channel
-rw-r--r-- 1 nobody nobody 1414 Jun 10 16:51 #channel.log
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 10 16:19 dev
-rw-r----- 1 rezrov nobody 5187 Jun 9 22:25 ircd.pem
-rw-r--r-- 1 rezrov nobody 17 Jun 9 22:26 motd.txt
./dev:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 10 16:19 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 nobody root 4096 Jun 10 16:20 ..
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 3 Jun 10 16:16 null
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 1, 9 Jun 10 16:19 urandom
License
GNU General Public License version 2 or later.
Primary author
- Joel Rosdahl joel@rosdahl.net
Contributors
- Alex Wright
- Braxton Plaxco
- Hanno Foest
- Jan Fuchs
- John Andersen
- Julien Castiaux
- Julien Monnier
- Leandro Lucarella
- Leonardo Taccari
- Martin Maney
- Matt Baxter
- Matt Behrens
- Michael Rene Wilcox
- Ron Fritz