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 2.5 or newer, Python 2.6 or newer when SSL is used. Get it at http://www.python.org.

Installation

None. Just run "./miniircd --help" (or "python miniircd --help") to get some 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 *nixes), 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 --statedir, --logdir, --motd, and --ssl-pem-file from within the jail, e.g.:

# sudo miniircd --statedir=/ --logdir=/ --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 Leandro Lucarella Matt Behrens Ron Fritz