Tip of the day

The tip of the day is shown at the top of the docs website. The idea is that everyone, including experienced users, are shown some useful feature that they may not know about or have not realized the potential of, even if they were looking on the docs for something totally different. Tips are served since June 2022.

All tips

• Tip 1: The IRCOp guide shows how to do everyday IRCOp tasks and contains tips on fighting spam and drones.
• Tip 2: You can use a SSL/TLS certificate fingerprint instead of passwords.
• Tip 3: You can use the SAJOIN command to force a user to join a channel. Bans and other restrictions will be bypassed.
• Tip 4: Log files can use JSON logging. You can also send the JSON data to IRCOps on IRC.
  

The JSON is machine readable and contains lots of details about every log event.

• Tip 5: What is shown in WHOIS can be configured in detail via set::whois-details.
• Tip 6: UnrealIRCd 6 uses GeoIP by default. It is shown in WHOIS but also available as country in mask items,
  

for example it can be used in the TLD Block to serve a Spanish MOTD to people in Spanish speaking countries.

• Tip 7: Almost every channel mode can be disabled. Don't like halfops? Use blacklist-module chanmodes/halfop;
• Tip 8: If you run multiple servers then consider using Remote includes to share configuration settings.
• Tip 9: To upgrade UnrealIRCd on *NIX simply run: ./unrealircd upgrade
• Tip 10: You can use a SSL/TLS certificate fingerprints to exempt trusted users from server bans or allow them to send more commands per second.
• Tip 11: Use set::restrict-commands to prevent new users from executing certain commands like LIST. Useful against drones/spam.
• Tip 12: Channel mode +P makes a channel permanent. The topic and modes are preserved,
  

even if all users leave the channel, and even if the server is restarted thanks to channeldb.

• Tip 13: If you don't want to receive private messages, set user mode +D. You can also force it on all users.
  

Or, if you only want to allow private messages from people who are identified to Services then set +R.

• Tip 14: Don't like snomasks / server notices? Then configure logging to a channel.
• Tip 15: Still not using a real SSL/TLS certificate? Check out Using Let's Encrypt with UnrealIRCd.
• Tip 16: Consider contributing to make UnrealIRCd even better: reporting bugs, testing, helping out with support, ..
• Tip 17: On IRC you can use the HELPOP command to read about various IRC commands.
• Tip 18: Exempt your IP address from bans, just in case you or a fellow IRCOp accidentally GLINES you.
• Tip 19: If you still have users on plaintext port 6667, consider enabling Strict Transport Security to gently move users to SSL/TLS on port 6697.
• Tip 20: The Security article gives hands-on tips on how to deal with drone attacks, flooding, spammers, (D)DoS and more.
• Tip 21: Check out Special users on how to give trusted users/bots more rights without making them IRCOp.
• Tip 22: With the UnrealIRCd administration panel you can add and remove server bans and do other server management from your browser.
• Tip 23: If you want to bypass access checks for channels as an IRCOp, use SAMODE or SAJOIN. Or use OperOverride.
• Tip 24: You can exempt users dynamically from server bans, spamfilter, maxperip and other restrictions with the ELINE command on IRC.
• Tip 25: The blacklist { } block can be used to ban known troublemakers that are listed in blacklists like EfnetRBL and DroneBL.
• Tip 26: Channel mode +H provides Channel history to modern clients. Optionally, it can be stored on-disk to be preserved between server restarts.
• Tip 27: Channel mode +f is a powerful anti-flood feature. It is also slightly complex. Enable it in your most important channels, and consider setting a default in set::modes-on-join.
• Tip 28: Connthrottle will limit the damage from big drone attacks. Check if the flood thresholds and exceptions are OK for your network.
• Tip 29: Did you know that users are put in the security-group known-users based on their reputation score or if they are identified to Services?
  

Users in this group receive a number of benefits, such as being able to send more messages per minute.

• Tip 30: The antirandom module can be a useful tool to block clients with random looking nicks.
• Tip 31: You can allow trusted users to send more messages per second without having to make them IRCOp. Especially useful for bots.