14 KiB
Modern IRC
tl;dr: Why and how to have modern and respectful chat system with IRC.
After reviewing and testing many different chat solutions the clear winner is IRC. More precisely a group of different softwares togethers:
- IRC
- ZNC (with replay module and palaver module)
- weechat (with replay script)
- thelounge
- Palaver (for iOS mobile).
How to chat in 2019? Certainly with slack, or via a social media app in the browser or mobile phone app.
How geeks should chat in 2019?
To answer this question here is my opinion after having tried many different chat solutions1. Here are the feature I think a modern solution should have:
- terminal client or terminal-like UI (in emacs for example). All modern UI looks cool for screenshots, but if you are going to use it a lot, you will prefer density over good looking. Most app, web app are terrible related to information by number of pixel ratio.
- multi-platform: If you do not have a terminal at hand (or emacs) then, you should be able to get your message on your phone or via a web interface for portability.
- self-hosted: you should control your data, your history, your logs, the encryption methods, etc…
- teams and direct messages
- notifications, I tend to control those a lot, but a small private team chat is one of few exception where you generally want to be notified.
- Frugal. Really, we have a responsibility to do our best not to consume more resources than we really need. Chat should be about TEXT, not images, not videos, not presentations and PDF.
- Refuse anti-features: show when someone is typing, show when someone as read your message, etc… Those functionality are in fact increasing social insecurity and forces you to answer sooner instead of really taking the time to answer correctly.
- Use free software (not just open source software).
I am quite disappointed by modern chat applications.
Their major problems are:
- resource-heavy; most those client applications (slack, gitter, riot, mattermost, etc…) easily consume more than 300MB of RAM. Most of the time those clients are all electron app.
- not private; most solution do not encrypt your conversations. Even if using encryption mechanism and you trust your client, and you will still reveal your social network topology.
-
anti-minimalist; I want dense text. I do not want:
- emojis,
- images,
- animations (gif or videos),
- HTML/Markdown display
-
manipulative; they try very hard to optimize engagement. This is generally achieved through FOMO2 and social anxiety manipulations. A few examples:
- show when someone is writing a message
- show when someone has read a message,
- get notified about missed messages,
- get a "top messages you missed",
- etc…
- Prepare to EEE3: Most of those "modern" solution are a all-in-one solution, server + clients with generic + specific features. That way, some feature will be only possible in their client or that will push concurrent app developers to follow the pace of new features.
Digression
The manipulative part is quite important to me. Many users appeart to ask for those "features". I think this is beacause most of those people should take the time to reflect about the real plus value of those features vs their price. As it is stated in Digital Minimalism4, those feature are not the real reason you use it. I think this is an instance of the recent software development:
The idea that software MUST evolve and change. Add as much new features as possible, instead of striving for simplicity, stability and security.
We pass too much time asking about the how and forgetting about the why? I would rather prefer a system that does not evolve much but study the real full impact of adding a new feature to it. And I think some software should be considered finished (like TeX).
Would that feature be a full total net positive for everyone? Or is there a price to pay? The price is generally the size and complexity of the project, that will make it bigger, slower, harder to manipulate, install, interact-with.
About failed attempts :PROPERTIES: :CUSTOM_ID: different-tries
:END:
- Matrix: I've used Matrix, and in fact it was really good except; the server is written in python and is clearly not frugal at all. Also I wanted to delete most of the history in the DB, and it was impossible to find a working documentation explaining how to do that correctly and easily (I'm not even sure this is possible). You can easily remove some channels history from the DB, but doing the opposite, keeping the history only of some channel and removing all others doesn't appear to be easy.
- Mattermost: I've tried to install mattermost, to install it, there is no package, you need to start a shell script as root that will erase and change your nginx configuration…. Seriously…
- Rocket.chat, ho…. a nice word about the difference between community version and pro version… no thank you. I prefer something sustained by free software standards.
- I tried XMPP, it was OK. But the clients weren't really good, I could have used bitlbee, the installation looked more complex than IRC.
Finally, IRC + ZNC with replay module is the winner. It was the easiest and best solution.
- it works
- it is Free Software
- it is frugal
- it is old
- it is minimalist
- it is feature complete for a small team chat.
Tutorial
Here is how to have a great private self-hosted IRC server to share with a small group of people.
If this appear to be too much work for you, you should simply use a service that host a znc bouncer for you (I found some apparently free services doing that) and find an IRC server allowing you to create some private channel.
Self Host
You might use an external IRC server. But it is a lot safer to self-host it.
Self-hosting might not be easy if you are not familiar about how to do that.
- buy a domain name
- buy a machine (VPS, baremetal, host it at your home)
- configure the DNS for your domaine name go to your machine
- configure letsencrypt to support wildcard hostnames.
- know how to create reverse proxy
I couldn't find a nice resource to link to with all those details. This is certainly a call to write such article myself.
Create a reverse proxy with nginx
This is how I create new reverse proxy with nginx using a template: reverse-proxy-template.m4.
That I use with the following script: new-reverse-proxy.sh
#!/usr/bin/env zsh
(($#<3)) && {
print "usage: $0:t SUB DOMAIN PORT"
exit 1
} >&2
SUB="$1"
DOMAIN="$2"
PORT="$3"
m4 -D SUB=$SUB -D DOMAIN=$DOMAIN -D PORT=$PORT reverse-proxy-template.m4 > $SUB.$DOMAIN
The script will generate a reverse proxy nginx conf that I put in
/etc/nginx/sites-available/ and I link it in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled.
Install/configure ngircd
There are multiple IRC server. I gave my preference to ngircd because it appeared lightweight, easy to install and configure.
So use your preferred package manager to install it:
sudo apt-get install ngircd
Configure the /etc/ngircd/ngircd.conf file.
I only show the really interesting lines for a private small IRC for a team.
[Global]
Name = irc.your.domain
Info = My Incredible IRC
Password = privateIRCSecretPassword
[Options]
# prevent channel creation
AllowedChannelTypes =
[SSL]
Certfile = /etc/letsencrypt/live/your.domain/fullchain.pem
Keyfile = /etc/letsencrypt/live/your.domain/privkey.pem
Ports = 6667,9999
[Channel]
# predefined channel
Name = #general
Topic = Main team channel
MaxUsers = 23
[Channel]
Name = #status
Topic = Status update channel
MaxUsers = 23Install/configure ZNC
Install ZNC from sources or via your package manager. I choose sources. Choose the latest version if you can.
> wget https://znc.in/releases/archive/znc-1.7.5.tar.gz
> tar xzf znc-1.7.5.tar.gz
> cd znc-1.7.5
> mkdir build
> cd build
> make
> make installThen create your config file for example via:
> znc --makeconfFor the question, keep buffers after replay, you should certainly answer yes. To use znc web interface behind an nginx reverse proxy:
<Listener listener0>
AllowIRC = false
AllowWeb = true
Host = localhost
IPv4 = true
IPv6 = false
Port = 10001
SSL = false
URIPrefix = /
</Listener>
<Listener listener1>
AllowIRC = true
AllowWeb = false
IPv4 = true
IPv6 = true
Port = 10002
SSL = true
URIPrefix = /
</Listener>Now you can put your znc behind a reverse proxy.
Playback module
> cd ~/.znc/modules
> wget ...../playback.cpp
> znc-buildmod playback.cpp
Should create a playback.so.
Palaver push module
> git clone ... znc-palaver
> cd znc-palaver
> znc-buildmod palaver.cpp
> cp palaver.so ~/.znc/modules/That's it. The major modernizer of IRC are here in ZNC.
Install/configure clients
weechat
- add the weechat znc playback script
-
add the default server capabilities
/set irc.server_default.capabilities "account-notify,away-notify,cap-notify,multi-prefix,server-time,znc.in/server-time-iso,znc.in/self-message,znc.in/playback -
add the server for your networks:
/server add zncnetwork znc.my.domain/6697 -ssl -username=username/zncnetwork -password=password -autoconnect /connect zncnetwork
More details here: https://wiki.znc.in/Weechat
thelounge
Here are the infos for installing it.
https://thelounge.chat/docs/install-and-upgrade
You can use my reverse proxy scripts to put the lounge behind a reverse
proxy from your host. So you'll be able to reach thelounge.my.domain.
Palaver
Using palaver should be straightfoward. Here is its website: https://palaverapp.com
I previously used the app mutter, but it appears to be deprecated and has a lot of bugs since the iOS 13 update.
Bonus
No brainer upload file
I made an image uploader inspired by the image uploader example of the Yesod web framework. It is only one single self-executable file + one css and jquery. The only dependency is stack.
So to install it:
- install stack
- create an nginx reverse proxy protected with basic-auth
- share the creds to your team mates
- start the script, and enjoy