MacServPro
General information
Uh, what's a MacServPro?
MacServ is an IRC bot that's been run in DALnet's #macintosh for about three years in various forms, and MacServPro is its much needed rewrite. While MacServ is implemented mostly as an ircII bot, MacServPro was written from scratch in C. This allows it to get around many of the limitations of ircII, which will hopefully allow lots of nifty new features.
What's the development status?
Right now I've built a lot of the fundamental things MSP will need to run, and quite a few of the features. Since I'm writing this from scratch, there's still a lot left to do. I don't want to replace MacServ until MacServPro runs reliably and provides every feature that MacServ did, but until then I'll be running MSP on #macintosh as an extended test of sorts. Take a look at the progress/features page for more info.
What does MacServPro do?
Many of MacServ's functions are useful only to people with 'user'-level access (i.e. #macintosh ops), but there are still a few things anyone can use. See the command reference for more information about commands. There are a few features not accessible on IRC, such as the userlist CGI that can be queried through the web.
Questions
If I see questions that seem to be recurring, I'll add answers here:
Why does MacServPro (or MacServ) keep requesting my CTCP version?
MacServ and MacServPro will send your IRC client a request for its version whenever you join #macintosh. This is used to report your IRC client to the ops so that they can more easily help you. For example, most #macintosh users tend to be running Ircle, and often there is a tendency to give answers that will only work in Ircle; knowing that someone is instead running, for example, Snak, we can provide a solution that will work for them. Also, on rare occasions a fatal bug is discovered in an IRC client, and in those cases we may use the version information to let the people who are affected know about the bug and how they can avoid it. MacServ doesn't act otherwise on this information: it doesn't ban non-Mac users or anything of the sort; it's just a tool that can be used to better help members. There's no way to get around it; if the CTCP version annoys you, please try to ignore it - it's just one line that you'll only see once each time you join the channel.
Can I use my 3133t haX0r skillz to hack into MacServPro and add myself to the AOP list?
No. The last person who tried was sorely disappointed to discover that not only did his attempts fail, but they were also logged. And no, "I was only exploring your bot" isn't a good explanation of why you were doing it.
Can I have a MacServPro?
Nope. Not now, anyway; at the moment, I'm not distributing the source code. I may be inclined to change my opinion on this, however, when development is further along. It's also worth noting that MSP was designed specifically to be used on DALnet #macintosh, and thus makes assumptions that may not be relevant elsewhere; furthermore, it provides a number of features that probably wouldn't be very useful for other channels, and lacks features that other channels might need but aren't useful to us.
Is MacServPro a Mac bot? Do you know of any good Mac bots?
One might logically assume, given that the bot is named MacServPro and that it runs on #macintosh, that it runs on a Mac - but this would be wrong. MacServPro actually runs on my FreeBSD server, largely because I happen to have one, and I have more experience with UNIX programming than Mac programming. As for good Mac bots, I'm afraid I don't know of any. The last time I looked, all the ones I happened across were infinitely buggy or otherwise useless; mind you, this was several years ago, so it may not apply today.
Have questions about MacServPro? Send me an email: lnz6t7on@ambulatoryclam.net.
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