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subtitle: In 2019, IRC is still the best.
author: Yann Esposito
email: yann@esposito.host
date: [2019-10-19 Sat]
keywords: self-hosting chat irc
description: Why and how to have modern and respectful chat system with IRC.
______
After reviewing and testing many different chat solutions the clear winner
(at least for my taste) is IRC. More precisely via those softwares:
______
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?
This post is about my opinion on the subject after having tried many
different chat solutions[fn:tries].
Here is a list of the features I think a modern solution should have:
1. *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 web apps are terrible when looking at delivered information by
number of pixels ratio.
2. *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.
3. *self-hosted*: you should control your data, your history, your logs,
the encryption methods, etc...
4. *teams* and *direct messages*
5. *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.
6. *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.
7. *No anti-features*: show when someone is typing, show when someone
as read your messages, etc... Those functionalities increase your
social insecurities feeling. They forces you to answer sooner instead of
really take the time to answer correctly. You can read Digitial
minimalism to know more about that subject[fn:dm].
8. *Free software*
I am quite disappointed by /modern/ chat applications.
Their major problems are:
mattermost, etc...) easily consume more than 300MB of RAM.
Most of the time those clients are electron applications.
Even if using encryption mechanism and you trust your client, and you
will still reveal your social network topology.
I do not want:
+ emojis,
+ images,
+ animations (gif or videos),
+ HTML/Markdown display
This is generally achieved through FOMO[fn:FOMO] 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...
Most of those "modern" solution are all-in-one solutions.
Server API + Clients with specific features.
Doing it that way make it possible to provide specific features only via
this "all in one" solution.
If you want to use another client, or if they deprecate some (like slack
did by removing their IRC bridge) then you will have no choice to use
their entire closed ecosystem.
[fn:eee]
Embrace, extend, and extinguish
[fn:dm] http://www.calnewport.com/books/digital-minimalism/
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.
no package, you need to start a shell script as root that will erase and
change your nginx configuration.... Seriously...
version and pro version... no thank you. I prefer something sustained by
free software standards.
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.
1. it works
2. it is frugal
3. it is old and stable
4. it is both minimalist and feature complete
[fn:FOMO] Fear Of Missing Out
[fn:tries] Here is a list of the chatting solutions I used for some time
and finally abandoned (I certainly forgot a few ones):
- slack
- matrix (self-hosted)
- keybase
- discord
- gitter
- XMPP (both hosted by a 3rd party and self-hosted)
- IRC ← the winner
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.
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.
1. buy a domain name
2. buy a machine (VPS, baremetal, host it at your home)
3. configure the DNS for your domain name go to your machine
4. configure letsencrypt to support wildcard hostnames
5. 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 an article myself.
This is how I create new reverse proxies with nginx using a template:
# Nginx configuration
server {
server_name SUB.DOMAIN;
access_log /var/log/nginx/SUB()_ssl_access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/SUB()_ssl_error.log;
# # access restricted
# auth_basic "Admin restricted";
# auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/htpasswd;
listen *:443 ssl;
listen [::]:443 ssl;
server_tokens off;
## SSL
ssl on;
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/DOMAIN/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/DOMAIN/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
ssl_session_timeout 5m;
## [Optional] Enable HTTP Strict Transport Security
## HSTS is a feature improving protection against MITM attacks
## For more information see: https://www.nginx.com/blog/http-strict-transport-security-hsts-and-nginx/
add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains";
location / {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:PORT;
gzip off;
proxy_redirect off;
## Some requests take more than 30 seconds.
proxy_read_timeout 30s;
proxy_connect_timeout 30s;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Ssl on;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
proxy_set_header X-Client-Verify SUCCESS;
proxy_set_header X-Client-DN $ssl_client_s_dn;
proxy_set_header X-SSL-Subject $ssl_client_s_dn;
proxy_set_header X-SSL-Issuer $ssl_client_i_dn;
}
}
## Redirects all HTTP traffic to the HTTPS host
server {
## In case of conflict, either remove "default_server" from the listen line below,
## or delete the /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default file.
listen 0.0.0.0:80;
listen [::]:80;
server_name SUB.DOMAIN;
server_tokens off; ## Don't show the nginx version number, a security best practice
return 301 https://$http_host$request_uri;
access_log /var/log/nginx/SUB.DOMAIN()_access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/SUB.DOMAIN()_error.log;
}
That I use with the following script:
#!/usr/bin/env zsh
(($#<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=.
There are multiple IRC server.
I gave my preference to
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 = 23
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 install
Then create your config file for example via:
> znc --makeconf
For 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.
In order not to miss any message in your clients you should keep a bouncer
running for you that will keep all IRC messages.
But in order to sync this history correctly among all your different IRC
clients you should install the playback module.
And if you wish to receive push notification you should also add a module
for your application (in my case palaver).
In order not to miss any messages in all your clients you should add this
> cd ~/.znc/modules > wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jpnurmi/znc-playback/master/playback.cpp > znc-buildmod playback.cpp
Should create a =playback.so= in =~/.znc/modules=.
You should find the ZNC push palaver module here:
https://github.com/cocodelabs/znc-palaver
> git clone https://github.com/cocodelabs/znc-palaver znc-palaver > cd znc-palaver > znc-buildmod palaver.cpp > cp palaver.so ~/.znc/modules/
Now you should be able to reach =znc.my.domain=.
You should see something like
caption: ZNC Login Page
Login with your admin user (set during the configuration or znc).
Then go to your Global settings
caption: ZNC Global Settings
And if you scroll down you should see a list of modules. Select the
playback and palaver modules and save your preferences.
caption: ZNC Modules
Then under the global settings, go to your User settings and scroll down to
see the Flags:
caption: ZNC User Settings Flags
Take care to unselect the "Auto Clear Chan Buffer", "Auto Clear Query
Buffer" and to select "Multi Clients".
If you forget to do that, the playback plugin will not work as expected.
Finally add your IRC server to via the Network block (in your User Settings):
caption: ZNC Add Network
From now on, you should always appear as a connected user to your IRC server.
This is your ZNC bouncer reading all the messages for you even when you are
not here.
Weechat the IRC client I use the most.
It is terminal based, use very few resources, it is fast, dense and very nice
to use.
1. add the
2. in weechat, set server capabilities
```irc
/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
```
3. add your server
```irc
/server add zncnetwork znc.my.domain/6697 -ssl -username=username/zncnetwork -password=password -autoconnect
/connect zncnetwork
```
4. save your confi with =/save=
More details here: https://wiki.znc.in/Weechat
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=.
Of course, connect the lounge via ZNC not directly to your IRC server.
Using palaver should be straightfoward.
There is a very clear ZNC configuration choice.
Here is its website: https://palaverapp.com
I previously used the app mutter, but it stopped to work after the iOS 13
update.
Quite often you want to share images/files in your chat.
Instead of using a public channel, I preferred to create a minimalist (223
lines of haskell) private server for this purpose only.
It is highly inspired from the image uploader example of the Yesod web
framework.
It is a single self-executable file + one css and jquery.
The only dependency is
So to install it:
1. install
2. =git clone https://gitlab.esy.fun/yogsototh/ymgur .=
3. follow the README instructions to launch it
4. create an nginx reverse proxy protected with basic-auth
5. share the creds to your group members
6. enjoy
