As you probably have noticed NickServ disappeared from our little IRC network a while back. I’m not sure of the reason behind this, the guy who hosted it hasn’t been online for a long time and doesn’t answer to email. Maybe he’s away or he got bored. Whatever reason, we can’t sit around with no NickServ for too long. No new registrations can be accepted etc, so we had to get something back online, and that’s what I’ve been doing today.
I’ve set up an IRCd on the new server that I bought a couple of months back, and configured new IRC services such as NickServ and ChanServ on there. Around at 16.30 I linked up the new IRCd with services. I had however forgot to configure a session limit exception for Blinkenshell so everyone got G-lined (banned from the network) 🙂 That was quickly fixed, but since it was a G-line and not a disconnect all clients has to reconnect manually. Sorry about that. Other than that, things seems to be working fine now.
I also used this opportunity to change some other things. The network name was previously Allshells, and the network was intended for all sorts of shell providers. That never really took of however and there was only #blinkenshell and a couple of small channels. Since the other IRC operators are gone now, I decided to make this a network dedicated for Blinkenshell only. Thus the new name of our network is BlinkenIRC!
I’m also going to make this a SSL-only network, no remote unencrypted connections will be accepted. Connections from titan are basically going to localhost so there is no need for SSL there. Users who are connecting remotely to the IRC network will however have to make some changes. SSL connections are accepted on port 6697, port 6667 will be closed entierly soon. The SSL certificates are self-signed or signed by CAcert, but if you accept the certificate once and save the fingerprint you should be reasonably safe.
I’m also happy announce that djweezy has contributed with a third IRC server for the network hosted in the US, thanks!
To sum up, we now have two new IRC servers and a new NickServ. The new NickServ database is completely empty so you have to register your nickname again (and verify them in the signup program again). The easiest way to connect is via irc.blinkenshell.org on port 6697 with SSL enabled. More details on the servers and DNS-names is available here: BlinkenIRC
The new shell server is on the way btw, everything will probably be finished within a month or so.
