goircd/README

     goircd -- minimalistic simple Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server
     ==============================================================

SYNOPSIS

goircd is very simple IRC server, written on Go.

DESCRIPTION

goircd is very simple IRC server, written on Go.
It is heavily inspired by miniircd daemon written on Python.
It does not aim to replace full featured mass scalable IRC networks:

* It can not connect to other servers. Just standalone installation
* It has few basic IRC commands
* There is no support for channel operators, modes, votes, invites
  and so on
* No ident lookups, reverse DNS queries

But it has some convincing features:

* Only standard Go libraries, no external requirements
* Single executable binary
* No configuration file, just few command line arguments
* IPv6 out-of-box support
* Ability to listen on TLS-capable ports
* Optional channel logging to plain text files
* Optional permanent channel's state saving in plain text files
  (so you can reload daemon and all channels topics and keys won't
  disappear)
* Optional ability to authenticate users by nickname↔password

Some remarks and recommendations related to it's simplicity:

* Use either nohup or similar tools to daemonize it
* Just plain logging on stderr, without syslog support

SUPPORTED IRC COMMANDS

* PASS/NICK/USER during registration workflow
* PING/PONGs
* NOTICE/PRIVMSG
* MOTD, LUSERS, WHO, WHOIS, VERSION, QUIT
* LIST, JOIN, TOPIC, +k/-k channel MODE

USAGE

Just execute goircd daemon. It has following optional arguments:

* -hostname: hostname to show for client's connections
* -bind: address to bind to (:6667 be default)
* -motd: absolute path to MOTD file. It is reread every time MOTD is
         requested
* -logdir: directory where all channels messages will be saved. If
           omitted, then no logs will be kept
* -statedir: directory where all channels states will be saved and
             loaded during startup. If omitted, then states will be
             lost after daemon termination
* -tlsbind/-pem: enable TLS, specify address to listen on and path
                 to PEM file with certificate and private key
* -passwords: enable client authentication and specify path to
              passwords file
* -verbose: increase log messages verbosity

TLS

If you specify -bind and -tlsbind simultaneously, then you will have
both raw and encrypted listening sockets. You can use -bind "" to
disable raw socket.

AUTHENTICATION

You can turn on optional client authentication by preparing passwords
file and using the -passwords argument. Format of passwords file is:

    login1:password1\n
    login2:password2\n
    …

You can force rereading of passwords file without server interruption by
sending HUP signal to him.

LICENCE

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.