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Oragono Information

Heres a bunch of misc info about the Oragono server! This can include questions, plans on how Im going forward, how to properly use features, or why Oragono does/doesnt do something.

Essentially, this document acts as a braindump about Oragono while we figure out a better place to put all this information.

Accounts and Channels

Most IRC servers out there offer IRC account and channel registration through external services such as NickServ and ChanServ. In Oragono, we bundle accounts and channel ownership in as a native server feature instead!

Because theres a lot of aspects of accounts/channels that havent been specified as native commands and all yet, Oragono includes the pseudo-clients NickServ and ChanServ to roughly mimic the functionality that other IRCds get from services packages, in a user-facing set of commands thats familiar to everyone.

The plan is to move more features and functionality (such as channel registration, channel permissions and all) over to native commands first and to use the NickServ/ChanServ as legacy interfaces to access these functions. However, its gonna be a while before all of this is specified by someone like the IRCv3 WG.

Server-to-Server Linking (or Federation)

Right now Oragono doesnt support linking multiple servers together. Its certainly planned, but its a fair while away.

When I do add S2S linking to Oragono, I want to use it as a testbed for a new sort of linking protocol. Mostly, I want a meshy protocol that minimises the effects of netsplits while still ensuring that messages get delivered, and preserves the AP nature of IRC reliability (in terms of the CAP theorem), which is something that traditional solutions based on the Raft protocol dont do.

Basically, Im going to continue working on my DCMI protocol, get that to a point where Im happy with it and then start looking at S2S linking properly. If anyone is interested in server protocols and wants to look at this with me, please feel free to reach out!

Rehashing

Rehashing is reloading the config files and TLS certificates. Of course, you can rehash the server by connect, opering-up and using the /REHASH command. However, similar to other IRCds, you can also make the server rehash by sending an appropriate signal to it!

To make the server rehash from the command line, send it a SIGHUP signal. In *nix and OSX, you can do this by performing the following command:

killall -HUP oragono

This will make the server rehash its configuration files and TLS certificates, and so can be useful if youre automatically updating your TLS certs!

REST API

Oragono contains a draft, very early REST API implementation. My plans for this is to allow external web interfaces or other automated programs to monitor whats going on with the server, apply/remove bans, and to essentially allow administration of the server without being connected to it and opered-up. This sort of API mimics InspIRCd and Anope, which contain similar APIs.

Im not sure exactly how its going to continue to be developed, and Im sure therell be lots of changes around appropriately restricting access to the API, which is why its disabled for now and not exposed in our Docker builds. As well, while its very unstable, the REST API doesnt count for our SemVer versioning. When this feature is more developed and Im happy with where its at, Ill provide proper support and documentation for the API.

Rejected Features

Rejected sounds harsh, but basically these are features Ive decided Im not gonna implement in Oragono (at least, not until someone convinces me theyre worth doing).

Force/Auto-Join Channels on Connect

When a user connects, some IRC servers let you force-join them to a given channel. For instance, this could be a channel like #coolnet for a network named CoolNet, a lobby channel, or something similar.

My main objection to having this feature is just that I dont like it that much. It doesnt seem nice to forcibly join clients to a channel, and I know Im always annoyed when networks do it to me.

To network operators that want to do this, Id suggest instead mentioning the channel(s) in your MOTD so that your users know the channels exist! If they want to join in, they can do it from there :)