Hello World! We proudly present … ngIRCd 17! :-) After three release candidates, here it is, the new release. The most prominent new features are that user mode „c“ (show connect/disconnect NOTICEs, required for e.g. BOPM) and „x“ (hostname cloaking) have been implemented, and support for user authentication using PAM has been added. New configuration options „NoPAM“, „NoZeroConf“, and „SyslogFacility“ were supplemented and allow even better customization of ngIRCd. In addition, the debug mode has been enhanced, the daemon can dump its internal state now, which eases bug fixing. And the power of IRC operators has been raised: now they can use MODE on any channel and always change channel modes. The NEWS file lists the following new features since our last release (r16): * doc: change path names in sample-ngircd.conf depending on sysconfdir * Generate ngIRCd version number from GIT tag. * Make sourcecode compatible with ansi2knr again. This allows to compile ngIRCd using a pre-ANSI K&R C compiler again. * New configuration option "NoZeroConf" to disable service registration at runtime even if ngIRCd is compiled with support for ZeroConf (e.g. using Howl, Avahi or on Mac OS X). * New configuration option "SyslogFacility" to define the syslog "facility" (the "target"), to which ngIRCd should send its log messages. Possible values are system dependant, but most probably "auth", "daemon", "user" and "local1" through "local7" are possible values; see syslog(3). Default is "local5" for historical reasons. * Dump the "internal server state" (configured servers, established connections and known clients) to the console or syslog when receiving the SIGUSR2 signal and debug mode is enabled. * Enable the daemon to disable and enable "debug mode" on runtime using signal SIGUSR1, when debug code is compiled in, not only on startup using the command line parameters. * Implement user mode "x": hostname cloaking (closes: #102). * Change MOTD file handling: ngIRCd now caches the contens of the MOTD file, so the daemon now requires a HUP signal or REHASH command to re-read the MOTD file when its content changed. * Allow IRC ops to change channel modes even without OperServerMode set. * Allow IRC operators to use MODE command on any channel (closes: #100). * New configuration option "NoPAM" to disable PAM. * Implement asynchronous user authentication using PAM, please see the file doc/PAM.txt for details. * Add some documentation for using BOPM with ngIRCd, see doc/Bopm.txt. * Implement user mode "c": receive connect/disconnect NOTICEs. Note that this new mode requires the user to be an IRC operator. * Show SSL status in WHOIS output, numeric 275. Please see the ChangeLog for a list of all changes — it is available in the archive and online: <http://ngircd.berlios.de/doc/ChangeLog>. The new release can be downloaded here: * <ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/ngircd/ngircd-17.tar.gz> * <ftp://ngircd.barton.de/pub/ngircd/ngircd-17.tar.gz> GnuPG signatures for release 17, a Mac OS X package, patches from release 16 and 17~rc3 as well as further archive formats are available as well and can be downloaded from here: * <ftp://ngircd.barton.de/pub/ngircd/> * <ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/ngircd/> You can have a look at the complete history and every single patch using the GIT web-frontend located at: * <http://ngircd.barton.de/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=ngircd.git> I hope that there are now showstoppers … please report all bugs using our bug tracker (<http://ngircd.barton.de/bugzilla/index.cgi>) and/or this mailing list. Thanks for your support! Regards Alex P.S.: I updated my unofficial Debian packages already: <http://debian.barton.de>