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<!DOCTYPE article SYSTEM "supybot.dtd">
<article>
<articleinfo>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Jeremiah</firstname>
<surname>Fincher</surname>
</author>
<editor>
<firstname>Daniel</firstname>
<surname>DiPaolo</surname>
<contrib>DocBook translator</contrib>
</editor>
</authorgroup>
<title>Getting started with Supybot</title>
<revhistory>
<revision>
<revnumber>0.1</revnumber>
<date>18 Feb 2004</date>
<revremark>Initial Docbook translation</revremark>
</revision>
</revhistory>
</articleinfo>
<sect1>
<title>Introduction</title>
<para>
Ok, so you've decided to try out Supybot. That's great! The more
people who use Supybot, the more people can submit bugs and help
us to make it the best IRC bot in the world :)
</para>
<para>
First things first: Supybot <emphasis>requires</emphasis> Python
2.3. There ain't no getting around it. If you're a Python
developer, you probably know how superior 2.3 is to previous
incarnations. If you're not, just think about the difference
between a bowl of plain vanilla ice cream and a banana split. Or
something like that. Either way, <emphasis>we're</emphasis>
Python developers and we like banana splits.
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Installing the bot and its utilities</title>
<para>
So what do you do? First thing you'll want to do is run (with
root/admin privileges) <application>python setup.py
install</application>. This will install Supybot globally. If
you need to install locally for whatever reason, see this <ulink
url="http://tinyurl.com/2tb37">forum post</ulink> on how to do so.
You'll then have several new programs installed where Python
scripts are normally installed on your system
(<filename>/usr/bin</filename> or
<filename>/usr/local/bin</filename> are common on UNIX systems;
<filename>C:\Python23\Scripts</filename> is a common place on
Windows; and (watch out, this is a long one :))
<filename>/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/bin</filename>
is a common place on MacOS X.). The two that might be of
particular interest to you, the new user, are
<script>supybot</script> and
<script>supybot-wizard</script> The former
(<script>supybot</script> is the script to run an actual
bot; the latter (<script>supybot-wizard</script> is an
in-depth wizard that provides a nice user interface for creating
configuration files for your bot. We'd prefer you to the use
<script>supybot-wizard</script>, but if you're in a
hurry or don't feel like being asked many questions, just run
supybot with no arguments and it'll ask you only the questions
necessary ")to run a bot.
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Firing up the bot for the first time</title>
<para>
So after running either of those two programs, you've got a nice
registry file handy. If you're not satisfied with your answers
to any of the questions you were asked, feel free to run the
program again until you're satisfied with all your answers. Once
you're satisfied, though, run the
<script>supybot</script> program with the
registry file you created as an argument. This will start the
bot; unless you turned off logging to stdout, you'll see some nice
log messages describing what the bot is doing at any particular
moment; it may pause for a significant amount of time after saying
"Connecting to ..." while the server tries to check its ident.
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Your first interactions with the bot</title>
<para>
Ok, so let's assume your bot connected to the server fine and
joined the channels you told it to join. For now we'll assume you
named your bot <nick>supybot</nick> (you probably didn't,
but it'll make it much clearer in the examples that follow to
assume that you did). We'll also assume that you told it to join
<channel>#channel</channel> (a nice generic name for a channel,
isn't it? :)) So what do you do with this bot that you just made
to join your channel? Try this in the channel:
</para>
<ircsession>
supybot: list
</ircsession>
<para>
Replacing <nick>supybot</nick> with the actual name you
picked for your bot, of course. Your bot should reply with a list
of the plugins he currently has loaded. At least
<plugin>Admin</plugin>, <plugin>Channel</plugin>,
<plugin>Config</plugin>, <plugin>Misc</plugin>,
<plugin>Owner</plugin>, and <plugin>User</plugin> should be
there; if you used <script>supybot-wizard</script> to
create your configuration file you may have many more plugins
loaded. The <botcommand>list</botcommand> command can also be used to
list the commands in a given plugin:
</para>
<ircsession>
supybot: list Misc
</ircsession>
<para>
Will list all the commands in the <plugin>Misc</plugin> plugin.
</para>
<sect2>
<title>Accessing the bot's online help</title>
<para>
If you want to see the help for any command, just use
the <botcommand>help</botcommand> command:
</para>
<ircsession>
supybot: help help
supybot: help list
supybot: help load
</ircsession>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Dealing with ambiguous commands</title>
<para>
Sometimes more than one plugin will have a given command; for
instance, the <botcommand>list</botcommand> command exists in both
the <plugin>Misc</plugin> and <plugin>Config</plugin>
plugins (both loaded by default). <plugin>List</plugin>, in
this case, defaults to the <plugin>Misc</plugin> plugin, but
you may want to get the help for the
<botcommand>list</botcommand>
command in the <plugin>Config</plugin> plugin. In that
case, you'll want to give your command like this:
</para>
<ircsession>
supybot: help config list
</ircsession>
<para>
Anytime your bot tells you that a given command is defined in
several plugins, you'll want to use this syntax
(<botcommand>plugin command</botcommand>) to disambiguate which
plugin's command you wish to call. For instance, if you
wanted to call the <plugin>Config</plugin> plugin's
<botcommand>list</botcommand> command, then you'd need to say:
</para>
<ircsession>
supybot: config list
</ircsession>
<para>
Rather than just <botcommand>list</botcommand>.
</para>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>Loading plugins</title>
<para>
Now that you know how to deal with plugins having commands
with the same name, let's take a look at loading other
plugins. If you didn't use
<script>supybot-wizard</script>, though, you might
do well to try it before playing around with loading plugins
yourself: each plugin has its own
<function>configure</function> function that the wizard uses
to setup the appropriate registry entries if the plugin
requires any.
</para>
<sect3>
<title>Identifying yourself as the bot owner</title>
<para>
Now, if you do want to play around with loading plugins,
you're going to need to have the
<capability>owner</capability>
capability. If you ran the wizard, then chances are you
already added an owner user for yourself. If not,
however, you can add one via the handy-dandy
<script>supybot-adduser</script> script. You'll
want to run it while the bot is not running (otherwise it
could overwrite
<script>supybot-adduser</script>'s changes to
your user database before you get a chance to reload
them). Just follow the prompts, and when it asks if you
want to give the user any capabilities, say yes and then
give yourself the <capability>owner</capability> capability
(without the quotes), restart the bot and you'll be ready
to load some plugins!
</para>
<para>
Now, in order for the bot to recognize you as your owner
user, you'll have to identify with the bot. Open up a
query window in your irc client (/query should do it; if
not, just know that you can't identify in a channel
because it requires sending your password to the bot).
Then type this:
</para>
<ircsession>
help identify
</ircsession>
<para>
And follow the instructions; the command you send will
probably look like this, with your owner user and password
replaced:
</para>
<ircsession>
identify myowneruser myuserpassword
</ircsession>
<para>
The bot will tell you that &ldquo;The operation
succeeded&rdquo; if you got the right name and password.
Now that you're identified, you can do anything that
requires any privilege: that includes all the commands in
the <plugin>Owner</plugin> and <plugin>Admin</plugin>
plugins, which you may want to take a look at (using the
<botcommand>list</botcommand> and
<botcommand>help</botcommand>
commands, of course). One command in particular that you
might want to use (it's from the <plugin>User</plugin>
plugin) is the <botcommand>addhostmask</botcommand> command: it
lets you add a hostmask to your user record so the bot
recognizes you by your hostmask instead of requiring you
to always identify with it before it recognizes you. Use
the <botcommand>help</botcommand> command to see how this
command works. Here's how I often use it:
</para>
<ircsession>
addhostmask myuser [hostmask] mypassword
</ircsession>
<para>
You may not have seen that "[hostmask]" syntax before.
Supybot allows nested commands, which means that any
command's output can be nested as an argument to another
command. The hostmask command from the
<plugin>Misc</plugin> plugin returns the hostmask of a
given nick, but if given no arguments, it returns the
hostmask of the person giving the command. So the command
above adds the hostmask I'm currently using to my user's
list of recognized hostmasks. I'm only required to give
<literal>mypassword</literal> if I'm not already
identified with the bot.
</para>
</sect3>
</sect2>
<sect2>
<title>The <botcommand>more</botcommand> command</title>
<para>
Another command you might find yourself needing somewhat often
is the <botcommand>more</botcommand> command. The IRC protocol
limits messages to 512 bytes, 60 or so of which must be
devoted to some bookkeeping. Sometimes, however, Supybot
wants to send a message that's longer than that. What it
does, then, is break it into "chunks" and send the first one,
following it with "(X more messages)" where X is how many more
chunks there are. To get to these chunks, use the more
command. One way to try is to look at the listing of
configuration groups for the bot (more on this in the
CONFIGURATION document) by giving the command "config list
supybot". Last I checked, it'll overflow into a second chunk.
When you invoke this command, you should see output like:
</para>
<ircsession>
&lt;supybot&gt; nick, ident, user, server, password, channels, prefixChars,
defaultCapabilities, defaultAllow, defaultIgnore,
humanTimestampFormat, externalIP, bracketSyntax, pipeSyntax,
followIdentificationThroughNickChanges, alwaysJoinOnInvite,
showSimpleSyntax, maxHistoryLength, nickmods, throttleTime,
snarfThrottle, threadAllCommands, pingServer, pingInterval,
upkeepInterval, flush, (1 more message)
</ircsession>
<para>
Now, to see the rest of the output, simply give the command
<botcommand>more</botcommand>, and it will show you the rest:
</para>
<ircsession>
&lt;jemfinch&gt; more
&lt;supybot&gt; httpPeekSize, and defaultSocketTimeout
</ircsession>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>You're ready!</title>
<para>
You should now have a solid foundation for using Supybot. Be sure
to check the help that is built-in to the bot itself if you have
any questions, and enjoy using Supybot!
</para>
</sect1>
</article>