Hulk IRC Server Guide

Installation

From Hackage

$ cabal install hulk

From Github

$ git clone git://github.com/chrisdone/hulk.git
$ cd hulk
$ cabal install

Usage

Configuration

$ cp hulk.conf.example hulk.conf

You can edit the port, server name and MOTD file in here.

Auth

$ mkdir auth

Put a salt for your passwords in auth/passwd. For example:

$ head -c 128 /dev/random | sha1sum > auth/passwd-key

Then generate a password for your IRC user:

$ hulk-generate-pass -u demo -c=hulk.conf >> auth/passwd

(It will wait for a single line containing a pass and output the user and sha1 sum.)

Start the server

$ hulk -chulk.conf

Logs / events will be outputted to stdout. This will be a configuration option later. (Send me a patch if you already did this!)

Clients must connect with a password and user that matches the users and passwords in your auth/passwd file.

Using with SSL

You can use it with stunnel.

Change the port setting in hulk.conf:

port = 6666

Generate an SSL certificate:

$ openssl req -new -out hulk.pem -keyout hulk.pem -nodes -x509 -days 365

Make a stunnel.conf file:

pid = /path/to/wherever/stunnel.pid
client = no
foreground = yes
output = /dev/stdout
cert = hulk.pem
[hulk]
connect = 127.0.0.1:6666
accept = 6667

Then run it:

stunnel stunnel.conf

(It may be in /usr/sbin/stunnel depending on your system.)

Then run hulk:

hulk -chulk.conf

Logging

Hulk doesn't support specific channel logging yet, but you can use a logger bot.

$ cabal install hog
$ hog -h=127.0.0.1 --port=6666 -n=hog -u=hog --pass=mypassword --channels=#dev,#x -l/directory/of/logs -d5

-d5 is the timeout before reconnect.

Using an announcer bot

If you're using a private IRC server you're probably using it at a dev company, and you probably want to make announcements about commits, tickets, etc. from a feed.

You can use rss2irc. But you need a patched version which supports sending the PASS command:

$ git clone git://github.com/chrisdone/rss2irc.git
$ cd rss2irc
$ cabal install

Then run it:

$ rss2irc http://myserver/foo.atom announce@127.0.0.1/#dev \
  -p 6667 -i 1 -l  --pass myannouncepass

Utility for 'telling' people things externally

Sometimes you want automatic scripts to send notices to the IRC.

Save this script in tell.sh:

(cat /mypath/tell-login; echo "NICK $1"; echo "TELL $2 :$3") | nc serverip 6667 -w 1 > /dev/null

Run it like this:

$ tell announce '#dev' 'Stuff happened!'

And put this in your /mypath/tell-login:

$ cat /opt/hulk/tell-login
PASS mypassword
USER myuser * * *