source: doc/README @ 5f8ab6a9

Last change on this file since 5f8ab6a9 was 6738a67, checked in by Sven Moritz Hallberg <pesco@…>, at 2008-07-16T23:22:52Z

merge in latest trunk

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1INSTALLATION
2============
3
4If you installed BitlBee from a .deb or .rpm you probably don't have to do
5anything anymore for installation. Just skip this section.
6
7If you want to compile BitlBee yourself, that's fine. Just run ./configure
8to set up the build system. If configure succeeds, run make to build BitlBee.
9make install will move all the files to the right places.
10
11--- inetd installation
12
13After installation you have to set up inetd (you got that one running,
14right? If not, just take a look at utils/bitlbeed.c) to start BitlBee. You
15need to add BitlBee to inetd.conf, like this:
16
176667 stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/sbin/tcpd /usr/local/sbin/bitlbee
18
19Creating a special BitlBee user and running BitlBee with that UID (instead
20of just 'nobody') might be a good idea.
21
22*BSD/Darwin/OSX NOTE: Most *BSD inetds are more scrict than the one that
23comes with Linux systems. Possibly all non-Linux inetds are like this. They
24don't allow you to specify a port number in the inetd.conf entry, instead
25you have to put a service name there (one that is also mentioned in
26/etc/services). So if there's no line in /services for 6667/tcp (or whatever
27you choose), add it and use that name in the inetd.conf entry.
28
29-- xinetd installation
30
31Most machines use xinetd instead of inetd these days. If your machine runs
32xinetd, you can copy the bitlbee.xinetd file from the doc/ directory to your
33xinetd.d/ directory. Most likely you'll have to change a thing or two before
34it'll work.
35
36After configuring your (x)inetd, send the daemon a SIGHUP and things should
37work. If not, see your syslogs, since both daemons will complain there when
38something's wrong.
39
40Also, don't forget to create the configuration directory (/var/lib/bitlbee/
41by default) and chown it to the UID BitlBee is running as. Make sure this
42directory is read-/writable by this user only.
43
44--- (Fork)Daemon mode
45
46If you don't want to run any inetd daemon, you can run BitlBee in Daemon
47mode. Right now, daemon mode may be a bad idea on servers with multiple
48users, since possible fatal BitlBee bugs will crash the BitlBee process and
49disconnect all connected users at once. Instead, you can use ForkDaemon
50mode, which serves every user from a separate process, without depending on
51an inetd daemon.
52
53To use BitlBee in daemon mode, just start it with the right flags or enable
54it in bitlbee.conf. You probably want to write an init script to start
55BitlBee automatically after a reboot. (This is where you realise using
56a package from your distro would've been a better idea. :-P)
57
58Note that the BitlBee code is getting stable enough for daemon mode to be
59useful. Some public servers use it, and it saves a lot of memory by serving
60tens of users from a single process. One crash affects all users, but these
61are becoming quite rare.
62
63
64DEPENDENCIES
65============
66
67BitlBee's only real dependency is GLib. This is available on virtually every
68platform. Any recent version of GLib (2.4 or higher) will work.
69
70Off-the-Record encryption support will be included by default if the
71configure script finds libotr in one of the usual places. You can pass
72--otr=1 or --otr=0 to force it on or off, respectively.
73
74These days, MSN Messenger clients have to connect to the MS Passport servers
75through HTTPS. BitlBee can use several SSL libraries for this: GnuTLS, NSS
76(which comes with Mozilla) and OpenSSL. OpenSSL is not GPL-compatible in some
77situations, so using GnuTLS or NSS is preferred. However, especially on *BSD,
78OpenSSL can be considered part of the operating system, which eliminates the
79GPL incompatibility.
80
81The incompatibility is also the reason why the SSL library detection code
82doesn't attempt to use OpenSSL. If you want to use OpenSSL, you have to
83force configure to use it using the --ssl=openssl parameter. For more
84information about this problem, see the URL's configure will write to stdout
85when you attempt to use OpenSSL.
86
87
88PORTABILITY ISSUES
89==================
90
91Cygwin NOTE: You'll need a glib installation to run BitlBee. However, Cygwin
92doesn't provide a glib package. You can download a binary tar.gz from:
93<http://my.dreamwiz.com/jbdoll/>. When you installed it, BitlBee should work
94fine. You'll probably like bitlbeed or xinetd to get it running on the
95network.
96
97On some non-Linux systems the program still suffers from some random bugs.
98Please do report them, we might be able to fix them if they're not too
99mysterious.
100
101Also, the configure script is known to not work very well with non-Bash
102shells, so if you experience problems, make sure you use bash to run the
103script. Same for the Makefile, it only works well with GNU make. (gmake on
104most BSD systems)
105
106If someone can tell us how to write Makefiles that work with both/all
107versions of make, we'd love to hear it, but it seems this just isn't
108possible.
109
110
111USAGE
112=====
113
114Not much to say here, it's all documented elsewhere already. Just connect to
115the new BitlBee IRC server and the bot (root) will tell you what to do.
116
117
118BACKGROUNDS
119===========
120
121We are both console lovers. But it is annoying to have a few tty's open with
122chat things in them. IRC, ICQ, MSN, AIM, Jabber... For X there is Gaim, which
123supports many chatprotocols. Why wasn't there such a thing for the console?
124
125The idea to port Gaim was easily thought of, of course. But we liked our IRC
126clients. And we used it the most, so we used it best. Importing it into the
127IRC client was a nice idea. But what if someone liked a different client.
128Then (s)he had to duplicate our work.
129
130That's a shame, we thought. Doing work twice is pointless. So when Wilmer
131got the ingenious thought in his mind while farming, to create an IRC to
132other chatnetworks gateway, we were both so excited, that we started working
133on it almost immediately. And the result is BitlBee.
134
135
136WEBSITE
137=======
138
139You can find new releases of BitlBee at:
140http://www.bitlbee.org/
141
142The bug tracking system:
143http://bugs.bitlbee.org/
144
145Our version control system is Bazaar-NG. Our repository is at:
146http://code.bitlbee.org/
147
148
149A NOTE ON PASSWORD ENCRYPTION
150=============================
151
152There used to be a note here about the simple obfuscation method used to
153make the passwords in the configuration files unreadable. However, BitlBee
154now uses a better format (and real encryption (salted MD5 and RC4)) to store
155the passwords. This means that people who somehow get their hands on your
156configuration files can't easily extract your passwords from them anymore.
157
158However, once you log into the BitlBee server and send your password, an
159intruder with tcpdump can still read your passwords. This can't really be
160avoided, of course. The new format is a lot more reliable (because it can't
161be cracked with just very basic crypto analysis anymore), but you still have
162to be careful. The main extra protection offered by the new format is that
163the files can only be cracked with some help from the user (by sending the
164password at login time).
165
166So if you run a public server, it's most important that you don't give root
167access to people who like to play with tcpdump. Also, it's a good idea to
168delete all *.nicks/*.accounts files as soon as BitlBee converted them to the
169new format (which happens as soon as the user logs in, it can't be done
170automatically because it needs the password for that account). You won't
171need them anymore (unless you want to switch back to an older BitlBee
172version) and they only make it easier for others to crack your passwords.
173
174
175LEGAL
176=====
177
178BitlBee is distributed under the GPL (GNU General Public License). See the
179file COPYING for this license.
180
181The MD5 algorithm code is licensed under the Aladdin license. This license
182can be found in the files, to which this applies. The SHA1 algorithm code
183is licensed under the Mozilla Public License, see http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/
184for details.
185
186The Yahoo! library used by BitlBee is libyahoo2 <http://libyahoo2.sf.net/>,
187also licensed under the GPL.
188
189
190        BitlBee - An IRC to other chat networks gateway
191                  <http://www.bitlbee.org/>
192        Copyright (C) 2002-2007  Wilmer van der Gaast <wilmer@gaast.net>
193                                 and others
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