_ ___ __ _ __ _ __| |_ __ ___ _ __ / _ \ / _` |/ _` |/ _` | '__|/ _ \| '_ \ | __/| (_| | (_| | (_| | | | (_) | |_) | \___| \__, |\__, |\__,_|_| \___/| .__/ |___/ |___/ |_| v1.3 Please at least SKIM this document before asking questions. In fact, READ IT if you've never successfully set up an eggdrop bot before. PLEASE! READ IT! (0) NOTICE Please read this file carefully before trying to set up this bot. Also, make SURE that you select your +n (owner) users wisely! They have 100% access to your bot and account! ONLY GIVE THIS POWER TO SOMEONE YOU TRUST COMPLETELY!! (1) WHAT IS EGGDROP? Eggdrop is an IRC bot, written in C. If you don't know what IRC is, this is probably not whatever you're looking for! Eggdrop, being a bot, sits on a channel and takes protective measures: to keep the channel from being taken over (in the few ways that anything CAN), to recognize banished users or sites and reject them, to recognize priveledged users and let them gain ops, etc. One of the more unique features of eggdrop is its "party line", accessable via DCC chat, which allows you to talk to other people lag-free. Consider it a multi-way DCC chat, or a miniature IRC (complete with channels). You can link up with other bots and expand the party line until it actually becomes something very much like IRC, in fact. Eggdrop is always being improved and adjusted because the author is never really satisfied with it. In fact, it existed for several years as v0.7 - v0.9 before finally going 1.0. A valiant effort has been made to chase down and destroy bugs. It is definitely nowhere near as buggy as the ircII client. Crashes should be rare and surprising (but aren't they always? [surprising anyway]). This README file contains information about how to get eggdrop, how to quickly compile the bot, what you may need to do when upgrading from older versions, a list of frequently asked questions about compiling, how to set up a crontab, some boring legal stuff, info about the mailing list (a great place to ask questions), and a complaint/explanation about the lack of documentation. The preliminary documentation is in "eggdrop.doc" and is intended to be read after you have eggdrop compiled and set up. It's changing all the time and getting new sections added. If you'd like to write a section, then please do! (2) HOW TO GET EGGDROP Before you can compile eggdrop, you need to have Tcl installed on your system. Most systems should have Tcl on them by now -- you can check by trying the command "tclsh". If it works, you will be given a "%" prompt, and you can type "exit" to exit the program. That means Tcl is on your system. If tclsh doesn't load, then Tcl probably isn't on your system, and you will need to ftp it. The best ftp site is: ftp://ftp.sunlabs.com/pub/tcl The current version as of this writing is 8.0. Right now, eggdrop pukes on 8.0betas, so we suggest that you use 7.6p2. NEW: 8.0 release reputedly works, but we've already had to code around problems with it. 7.6p2 is still suggested! If you email someone with problems and you're using 8.0 anything, you will have vomituous masses spat at you. Tcl comes with the Slackware distribution of Linux. HOWEVER, the one that comes on Slackware 3.0 is goofed up and you'll have to re-install it for yourself to get it working. (3) QUICK STARTUP #### NOW INCLUDED IN 'INSTALL' - READ IT *AFTER* FINISHING THIS #### (4) UPGRADING #### BACK UP YOUR USERFILE #### We can't re-iterate this enough, if you are upgrading, and you have even a slight possibility of downgrading again later you will HAVE to back up your userfile, or you will lose it. 1.3 radically changes a lot of things. There are many major changes between v0.9, v1.0, v1.1 and v1.3 so PAY ATTENTION to this part if you have a v0.9, 1.0 or 1.1 bot already. If you're just starting out, you can skip this section. to 1.3: * If you run sharebots, you will need to upgrade them all at the same time because of the new userfile format. Older bots will be able to link in, but will not get or send a userfile. 1.2's will also tend to refuse to share with another pre1.2. MAKE A NEW CONFIG FILE from the example, there are some radical extras. from 0.9/1.0 to 1.3: * Just redo the whole thing, absolutely everything has changed including the userfile and config file formats. from 1.1/1.2 to 1.3: * You will likely want to redo the config file, as much as changed. BACK UP!! You will need to run 'tclsh scripts/weed c' to convert your userfile from v3 (1.1/1.2) to v4 (5) FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (or "Why doesn't this thing work?") 1. WHAT DO I DO IF I GET THE ERROR "USER FILE NOT FOUND"? (1) Run eggdrop with the "-m" option (ie, "eggdrop -m mybot"). (2) Go to IRC and send "hello" to your bot (ie, "/msg mybot hello"). (3) You will become an owner on your bot. You can leave the bot running (nobody else will become a master if they say "hello"), but in the future, don't use the "-m" option when running the bot. 2. MY EGGDROP WON'T RUN; IT JUST SAYS "CAN'T FIND YOUR HOSTNAME!" Your machine is set up strangely, and eggdrop can't figure out its network hostname. You can get around this by setting an environment variable called HOSTNAME. In sh or ksh: $ HOSTNAME=myhost.domain.edu $ export HOSTNAME In csh or tcsh: % setenv HOSTNAME myhost.domain.edu It should work after that. You may want to bug your system admini- strator to set up her /etc/hosts file correctly, or add those above commands to your '.login' file (sh or ksh: '.profile'). 3. WHAT THE HECK IS TCL? Tcl is a scripting language written by John Ousterhout. It's much better than most "in-built" script langauges (like the one in ircII) and is meant to be linked with anything needing a script language. So I linked it with eggdrop. The file "tcl-commands.doc" in the eggdrop directory contains a list of the commands added to Tcl by eggdrop. There are also several example scripts in the scripts/ directory, and there are gobs of scripts floating around on the ftp sites if you like working by example (which is typically the best way). 4. MY BOT DIES AND THE LAST ENTRY IN THE LOGFILE IS "RECEIVED TERMINATE SIGNAL". WHAT DOES THAT MEAN AND CAN I PREVENT IT? There's nothing you can do to prevent it. It means the system admini- stator is killing the eggdrop process. Most of the time, it's an automatic thing that happens when the system is being rebooted -- so it's harmless, and if you have a crontab running, the bot will get restarted when the system is back online. Occassionally the system administrator will kill the bot manually -- for example, if he/she doesn't want bots running on the system. 5. MY COMPILE DIES AT THE LAST MINUTE WITH "LD FATAL SIGNAL 11"! This happens on Linux machines which have recently been converted to ELF by upgrading to Slackware 3.0. Apparently Slackware 3.0 comes with a non-ELF (a.out) Tcl library, and the compiler doesn't handle that well. (It should give you an error; instead it barfs.) Fixing it is tricky because even if you recompile libtcl.a, the linker will most likely find the "bad" one first, and your work will be in vain. Here's a fix that's been floating around on the eggdrop list: 1. Recompile 'libtcl.a' for yourself, to make sure an ELF library is created. 2. Copy it into your eggdrop/src directory, naming it 'libtcl2.a'. 3. Edit the Makefile and change the line that says '-L/usr/lib -ltcl' to '-L. -ltcl2'. 4. Recompile eggdrop. Also send hate-mail to the Slackware guy telling him to stop messing up the libraries. He seemed to assume that everyone would still want to compile old-style (a.out) binaries. 6. SOMEONE ELSE SET UP A BOT I DON'T LIKE. ARE THERE ANY BACKDOORS I CAN USE TO TAKE THEIR BOT DOWN? No, there have never been any backdoors and there never will be, so please stop asking. Every once in a while, someone finds a way to exploit a bug in eggdrop, but we fix these bugs as soon as I find out about them. If you want to bring down someone else's bot, you will not have my/our help. 6. WHAT ARE MODULES? Modules are a way of adding extra C code from the bot, much like tcl scripts, without requiring the bot recompiling, see doc/MODULES for more info. 7. CAN I COMPILE EGGDROP WITHOUT DYNAMIC MODULES? Yes, you can, if ./configure detects that your system CAN'T run modules it will setup 'make' to link the modules in statically for you, you can also choose this option if you can do dynamic modules by typing 'make static'. You can also try to compile dynamic modules on a static-only system by typing 'make eggdrop'. 7.1 DO I STILL NEED TO 'loadmodule modules' ??? YES, when you compile statically, all the modules are linked into the main executable *but* they are not enabled until you use loadmodule to enable then, hence you get nearly the same functionality with static modules as dynamic modules. 8. WHERE CAN I GET A PRECOMPILED EGGDROP FOR MY COMPUTER? It is HIGHLY recommended AGAINST using precompiled Eggdrops from untrusted sources. Eggdrop has been a regular target for hacking and crashing. Distribution of precompiled (binary) versions of Eggdrop are the easiest way of hackers to provide you with the easiest (and most dangerous) way of gaining access to not only your bot, but to your computer account directly. Don't advertise your precompiled eggdrop binary sites on the eggdrop list either =P 9. I GET 'Makefile:3 :invalid operator' OR SOME-SUCH-THING WHEN I TRY TO 'make' Try 'gmake' 10. WHEN I 'tclsh scripts/weed c' IT BARFS CHUNKS AT ME AND DIES :( UPGRADE YOUR TCL, you are probably using tcl 7.5 or earlier, some of the commands in weed require tcl7.6 to run, so either upgrade it, or removing the offending lines from you userfile (those strating with '.' generally) and accept the loss of that data. 11. I get a whole pile of "Unresolved symbol 'Tcl_AppendResult'" (or some other symbol) when I try to load a modules. Some of the standard libraries have been compiled for static linking only on your machine, you have 3 options: (1) if it's your own machine, recompile TCL using dynamic linking by using './configure --enable-shared' when you configure TCL (not the bot) and then remake, & reinstall (2) if it's not you machine, you make have to resort to 'make static' and 'make sinstall DESTDIR=' to make and install your bot. (3) if you are of a more aggressive sense of mind, go beat the stuffing out of your admin for have lame static libraries :) (6) SETTING UP A CRONTAB Eggdrop has become more stable with time, thanks mostly to people detail- ing bugs to me and helping me find places where it crashes. However, I'm sure there are still a few places where things aren't perfect -- that's how life works. Also, most systems go down from time to time. These things cause your bot to disappear from IRC, and you have to restart it. I have included a csh script called 'botchk' which will help keep the bot online. It will make the machine check every ten minutes to make sure your bot is still running. To use it, you have to add a line to your crontab. First, edit 'botchk' and change the directory and command line parameters so that it will be able to start up your bot. Then, add this line to your crontab: 0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /home/mydir/botchk If you don't want to get emails from cron, put this: 0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /home/mydir/botchk >/dev/null 2>&1 Naturally, you need to change the path to the correct path for botchk. If you've never used crontab before, here is a simple way to add that line: Create a new file called 'mycron' and put the above line into it. Then, from your shell prompt, type % crontab mycron That will create a new crontab entry for you, with a line that runs botchk every ten minutes. Botchk will then restart the bot when necessary (and send you email informing you). (7) BORING LEGAL STUFF The eggdrop bot is copyright (c) by Robey Pointer. As of January 1997, eggdrop is distributed according to the GNU General Public License. There should be a copy of this license in the file COPYING. If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Releases previous to 1.0m were made using a different licensing scheme. You may, at your option, use the GNU General Public License on those versions (instead of the license packaged with them) with my blessing. For any versions bearing a copyright date of 1997 or later, you have no choice -- you must use the GNU General Public License. The files "match.c", "net.c", and "blowfish.c" are exempt from the above restrictions. "match.c" is original code by Chris Fuller (email: crf@cfox.bchs.uh.edu) and has been placed by him into the public domain. "net.c" is by me and I also choose to place it in the public domain. "blowfish.c" is by various sources and is in the public domain. All 3 files contain useful functions that could easily be ported to other applications -- the other parts of the bot generally don't. Tcl is by John Ousterhout and is in no way affiliated with eggdrop, and has its own set of copyrights and whatnots, I'm sure. There is no warranty, implied or whatever. You use this software at your own risk, no matter what purpose you put it to. You didn't pay for it, so don't expect magic. (8) MAILING LIST To subscribe, send email to: majordomo@tacorp.net In the body of the message, put "subscribe eggdrop". ### DO NOT SEND ROBEY EMAIL ABOUT EGGDROP ### Robey is no longer developing the eggdrop code (although he does put a word in every now and then) so don't bother emailing him. If you have a serious problem, email the eggdrop mailing list and it will get to the coders. Please, before posting to this list, see what things are like, and when you do post, read over your post for readability, spelling, and grammar mistakes. Obviously, we're all human (or are we?) and we all make mistakes (heck, look at this document! ;). Don't flame, and read/follow the rules. (9) DOCUMENTATION I've been trying hard to keep the online documentation (in the help/ directory) fairly up-to-date. It should be complete now; you can browse through there for some handy tips. Please let me know if you find any help files that are incorrect or confusing! I know that a unified documentation would REALLY BE HELPFUL. All I can say is... I've been pretty busy. I just graduated in December and I've spent the past several months getting settled into the bay area, getting a job, etc. So I haven't even had much time to keep updating the bot. But I AM working on it, bit by bit. Stage one was finishing the online docs. Now I'm slowly adding bits to the unified documentation. I have seven sections written so far, and I'm not sure how helpful they are, but you can find them in "eggdrop.doc" for now. Comments and suggestions would be welcome! (10) OBTAINING HELP There exists no uniform channel currently in existance to support eggdrop. At one time, such channels did exist, but they most often esculate into a vanity channel, where no one is willing to help. Maybe in the future, a bot will be put up in a channel to offer answers to commonly asked questions, but until then, your best bet is the eggdrop mailing list. This is the end. Good. You actually read all the way down here. If you meet someone who hasn't, thwop them for me.