Cathexis IRCd

Version 1.5.5 — A modern IRC daemon based on the ircu/P10 protocol family.

Copyright (c) Cathexis Development

Features

• P10 Protocol with full ircu compatibility
• Modern TLS — OpenSSL 3.x, TLS 1.2+ minimum, configurable cipher suites
• HMAC-SHA256 Host Cloaking — cryptographically secure host hiding
• S2S HMAC Authentication — per-message HMAC-SHA256 signing on server links with per-link control
• IRCv3 — 32/32 CAPs — multi-prefix, userhost-in-names, extended-join, away-notify, account-notify, sasl (PLAIN/EXTERNAL), tls, cap-notify, server-time, account-tag, message-tags, echo-message, invite-notify, chghost, setname, batch, labeled-response, standard-replies, sts, message-ids, monitor, bot-mode, typing, no-implicit-names, pre-away, extended-monitor, channel-rename, message-redaction, read-marker, multiline, account-registration, chathistory
• Channel Modes — owner (+q), admin/protect (+a), halfop (+h), ban exceptions (+e)
• Argon2id operator and die/restart passwords
• MaxMindDB GeoIP lookups
• DNSBL support (DroneBL, EFnet RBL, custom zones)
• Login-on-Connect and SASL PLAIN/EXTERNAL

Building

./configure --prefix=$HOME/ircd
make
make install

The distribution includes pre-generated parser files (y.tab.c, y.tab.h, lex.yy.c). Bison and flex are only needed if you modify ircd_parser.y or ircd_lexer.l.

Configuration

Copy doc/example.ircd.conf to your install directory and edit it. At minimum, set:

1. General { name, description, numeric }
2. Admin { Location, Contact }
3. Operator { name, password } — generate with umkpasswd -m sha512
4. Features { HOST_HIDING_KEY1/2/3 } — generate with openssl rand -hex 32
5. Connect blocks for services

S2S HMAC

Enable globally with S2S_HMAC = TRUE in Features, then add hmac = yes to individual Connect blocks. Links without hmac = yes operate in legacy mode.

License

GNU General Public License v3+