EFnet Oper Guide Last update: 02-21-2002 Written and maintained by Riedel E-Mail: dennisv@vuurwerk.nl 1. Commands you should know about 2. The client of your choice 3. Your primary responsibilities 4. Re-routing 4.1 Re-routing other servers and remote connects 5. Kills and klines 6. Kill and K-Line requests 7. Happy birthday! 8. Security 9. Know who your friends are 10. The TCM bot 11. Services 12. G-Lines 1. Commands you should know about This is no longer covered here. IRCD-hybrid is changing too rapidly, so this section would be outdated in no time ;) For an up-to-date version, please download the latest hybrid at www.ircd-hybrid.org. 2. The client of your choice There are many IRC clients around for a wide variety of operating systems. Being an IRC Operator doesn't *require* you to use a UNIX client, however I personally prefer UNIX-based clients. If you're familiar with UNIX and use UNIX for opering, I suggest ircII / epic. There are a lot of scripts available for those two clients, and it's not that hard to write scripts yourself to suite your needs. It is important that you know how to operate your client, and familiarize yourself with the options and features. For whatever client you chose this goes for any of them: You should be in control of your client, instead of the client being in control of you. Resources : www.mirc.co.uk - mIRC (MS-Windows) www.irchelp.org - a variety of clients and scripts ftp.blackened.com - several UNIX based clients available 3. Your primary responsibilities As an IRC Operator, you're responsible for maintaining the server on a real-time basis. You represent your server, and you represent the network. Irresponsible / rude / offensive / stupid behavior may discredit your server and the network. You should focus on the task you were chosen for... maintainance. Sounds simple, no? It means getting rid of users that abuse the service, enforcing the server's policy and keeping the server linked. Users will ask you questions, and expect you to know all the answers.. after all, you're the oper! Be prepared for users trying to fool you, sweet talk you into things you don't want, lie and deceive. Most users are handling in good faith... however, the abusers have learned how to manipulate opers. They have studied the alien creature 'oper' for ages like biologists study animals. Be paranoid, be curious and be suspicious. I can't stress the importancy of that often enough. Second priority has the network. You were not chosen to maintain the network but you were chosen to maintain the server. However, you may want to be able to reroute servers. If you see something broken, don't be afraid to fix it. If you do, be sure you fix things and don't make it worse. Before you step into routing, be sure you've familiarized yourself with the network's topology, and be confident enough to perform such actions. (re)routing is covered in the next chapter. Opers on the network depend on a trusting relationship. You can usually take the word from an oper. Other opers are considered -trusted-, however, there are exceptions. Sometimes even opers lie to opers to get things done. Don't be afraid to ask for proof of a certain statement, such as logs. This doesn't mean you distrust the oper in question, but -you- and you alone are responsible for your actions. You call the shots on your server, unless your admin says otherwise. 4. Re-routing Re-routing is not hard, and it's not scary but it is important that you do it right. The commands you'll use are SQUIT and CONNECT. First, a very simple example. Let's say your server, irc.yourserver.com is lagged to it's uplink, irc.uplink.com and you want to reroute your server. You have to think about where you want your server to be linked, and you have to time your reroute. An example topology : irc.yourserver.com ---- irc.uplink.com | | \ B C D / \ E F / \ G H --- O / | \ | \ I J K L M \ N In this case, you're uplinked by irc.uplink.com irc.uplink.com also hubs B, C and D. Server B functions as hub for E and F; F hubs G and H; H hubs L, M and O. G hubs I, J and K. M hubs N. Your server is allowed to connect to server B, F and G. So you consider the servers you're able to connect to. Is the lag caused by a server that uplinks irc.uplink.com ? Use /stats ? irc.uplink.com to determine lag to the other servers. If irc.uplink.com does not respond, the lag is to your uplink. If so, you cannot be sure about the state of the other uplinks, so you'd have to get on a remote server and determine lag by using /stats ? and /trace. For example, you could connect to server N, and /trace yournick. Yournick, being the nick on your server. You'll see which route it takes, and what the problem server is. Example /trace output : S:[SERVER-N ] V:[2.8/hybrid] U:[SERVER-M ] S:[SERVER-M ] V:[2.8/hybrid] U:[SERVER-H ] S:[SERVER-H ] V:[2.8/hybrid] U:[SERVER-F ] S:[SERVER-F ] V:[2.8/hybrid] U:[SERVER-B ] S:[SERVER-B ] V:[2.8/hybrid] U:[irc.uplink.com ] S:[irc.uplink.com ] V:[2.8/hybrid] U:[irc.yourserver.com ] The trace doesn't complete... server-b announces irc.uplink.com, and irc.uplink.com announces your server. Your server should return something like : S:[irc.yourserver.] OPER [yournick!user@yourhost] If it doesn't, we know the lag is only between yourserver and uplink. Usually if there is lag between your server and your uplink, the send-queue rises. This is not always the case. Sometimes your server can write perfectly to your uplink, but not reverse. That is called one sided lag. We pick server B to link to. It means we have to SQUIT and CONNECT. To unlink from irc.uplink.com and connect to SERVER_B we'd type: /quote SQUIT irc.uplink.com :reroute /connect SERVER_B we *DON'T* SQUIT irc.yourserver.com... and I'll try to explain why: If we wanted to remove hub M from the network, and with it N, we'd issue a SQUIT M. An SQUIT follows a path, relays the SQUIT request to each server in that path. Finally it reaches server H, which is the hub for M. Server H sees the SQUIT and drops the link to M. Now a different situation, we want to separate yourserver, uplink, C and D from the rest of the network, in order to reroute. We'd have to SQUIT server B, since we want the -uplink- of server B (being irc.uplink.com) to drop the link to server B. If you'd SQUIT irc.yourserver.com, you ask yourserver.com to drop the link to itself, which is impossible. If you SQUIT irc.uplink.com, you ask yourserver to drop the link to uplink, which is what we want to do. After the SQUIT and CONNECT, the new situation looks like this : irc.uplink.com | | \ irc.yourserver.com -- B C D / \ E F / \ G H --- O / | \ | \ I J K L M \ N If yourserver is a Hub, it makes the situation more complex, since your actions have more impact. 4.1 - Re-routing other servers and remote connects Example topology : irc.uplink.com | | \ irc.yourserver.com -- B C D / \ E F / \ G H --- O / | \ | \ I J K L M \ N Let's say, hub H is way lagged to F, but G to F is fine... we want to reroute H, and stick H to G. We'd do : /quote SQUIT serverh :re-routing you babe /connect serverh 6667 serverg A global wallops will be sent : !serverg! Remote CONNECT serverh 6667 from ItsMe When re-routing, always give the server some time to prevent nick collides. When there is lag, people will connect to another server. When you SQUIT and CONNECT to fast, a lot of those clients will be collided. Also, stick to your territory. How enthusiastic you may be, you cannot route the world. If you're an oper on the US side, stick to the US side when re-routing. Needless to say, if you're EU, keep it to EU ;) 5. Kills and klines As an oper, you're given the incredible power *cough* of KILL and KLINE. /kill nick reason disconnects a client from IRC with the specified reason. A /quote kline *evil@*.dude.org :reason here bans the user from your server. Abusive kills and klines may draw attacks to your server, so always consider if a kline or kill is deserved. If the server gets attacked after a valid kill or kline, well.. tough luck. You should never be 'afraid' to kline anyone on your server. If it's a good reason, make it so. Even if you know it may cause the server to be attacked. Maybe good to think about is this: - if /ignore solves the problem rather than a kick, /ignore - kick if a ban is unneeded - ban if a /kill is unwarranted for - kill rather than kline if that solves the problem - kline when a server ban is really needed. You kline a user when you absolutely don't want this user to use the service your server is providing. Crosskills (killing users on another server) are another issue. Some admins don't care if users get /kill'ed off their server, for any reason or no reason at all... and other admins are very anal about it. A good way to go (IMO) is to issue a KILL if there is an absolute need for the target user to be disconnected. If there are active opers on that server, let them handle it. They'll be upset if you /kill a user off their server, without contacting them. /stats p irc.server.here shows the active opers on a particular server. Some opers have multiple o-lines and are not watching all sessions. If you can't find an active oper on a server, you can /quote operwall a request for opers from that server. Ghost KILLs are another story, an often misunderstood one. When you see a /KILL from an oper with the reason 'ghosted' they usually KILL a client that's about to ping timeout. That is not what a ghost is! To quote Dianora: "a ghost happens because a client misses being killed when it should be. Its a race condition due to nick chasing". In other words, Server X thinks client A has been KILLed, while server Y missed the KILL for that client. 6. Kill and K-Line requests As previously mentioned, if an oper from another server contacts you and requests a kill or a kline for a local client with a good reason, you can usually trust this request. Opers depend on a trusting relationship. However, since you're responsible for the kill or kline, it is not rude to ask for proof. It depends on the oper making the request how thats interpreted, but the way they respond to asking for proof tells more about them than about you. The more and longer you oper, how better you get to know the other opers. You know who is honest, you'll know who are lying and deceiving. Before you acquire this knowledge, you can merely rely on common sense and instincts. You'll probably make mistakes occasionally, and thats nothing to be ashamed of. Opers are - despite contrary believes - human. Users occasionally will ask you to kill or kline a user/bot too. Some requests are straight-forward and clear, others require you to be cautious. I recommend to always investigate such requests, and when you're confident the request is valid, issue the kill or kline. 7. Happy birthday! It is a custom on EFnet to birthday /kill opers of whom it is his/her birthday. Not all opers like this, but typically those opers don't let others know about their birthday. You'll notice that the KILLS say a lot about who likes who and who is friends with who. Whether you want to participate, is entirely up to you. 8. Security As with any privilege, you have to handle it cautiously and responsibly. Be sure that your o/O line doesn't get compromised! Oper only from secure hosts. You and only you should know your password. Don't share your oper account, and make your oper password a UNIQUE one. If your o/O line gets compromised, nasty things may/will happen. Imagine an oper with crosskill capabilities who's operline gets 'hacked'... the results are often disastrous and you will lose respect and trust from others. It can cause your oper privileges to be revoked, or even the server to be (temporarily) delinked. 9. Know who your friends are As an oper you will get a lot of users that want to be 'friends' with you. Users offer you free* access to their *nix servers, ops in channels, unlimited leech access to the biggest and fastest warez sites *gasp* and more. They want favors in return. They say they don't but they truly want something in return. They -expect- something in return. You could either don't respond to such offers, or use them. The last option creates an even more distorted image of opers and doesn't do any good for the user <-> oper relationship. Your *real* friends are usually the persons who were your friends _before_ you acquired the extra privileges. 10. The TCM Bot A TCM bot can be a valuable tool for opers. It keeps record of all connected clients, flags clients with multiple connections and has all sorts of other useful commands. There are three different kind of TCM's in use on EFnet, being OOMon, TCM-Dianora and TCM-Hybrid. Every one of them requires you to log in to be able to access the privileged commands. On OOMon you DCC chat the TCM bot and do '.auth yournick yourpass' where yournick is your oper name in your o/O line. In TCM-Dianora and TCM-Hybrid you register with: '.register yourpass', where yourpass is your password ;) All TCM commands start with a period. If you forget the period, the text goes into the 'partyline', where it is echoed to all connected opers. Resources : http://toast.blackened.com/oomon/help http://www.db.net/~db/tcm.html 11. Services A recent addition to EFNet is Channel Fixer, aka ChanFix. This is an automated service that re-ops clients on opless channels. There are a few restrictions. First, the channel has to be of significant size for ChanFix to store it in its database. Second, it only logs static addresses. How does it work? Periodically it stores information about the channel state in its database, for every channel in there. On every 'run', a channel operator gets one point. These scores make a top-5 of 'most frequent opped clients'. When a channel becomes opless, ChanFix will join and op the top-5 opped clients CURRENTLY IN THE CHANNEL. Chanfix can be invoked manually by server administrators. /msg ChanFix chanfix #channel is the command to do it. ChanFix will join, and treat the channel as if it were opless. It lowers TS by one (resulting in a deop of the entire channel) and re-ops the top-5 clients currently in the channel. The Channel Fixer won't log or actively fix channels when there's a split of significant size. Needless to say, the chanfix command must be used with caution. 12. G-Lines Oh yes! A G-Line section. Currently, a part of EFNet (EU-EFnet) has G-Lines enabled. This was decided by the EU admin community and is now mandatory within EU-EFnet. In order for a G-Line to be activated, three opers from three different servers need to issue the _exact_ same G-Line. The reason is not counted. G-Lines work best when the EU side of EFNet is not fragmented. G-Lines will, however, propogate through a Hybrid 6 hub (but not a CSr hub) even if the hub server has G-Lines disabled. This propogation allows two halves of EU-EFnet to have concurrent G-Lines set even when split by US hub servers. Questions / Comments / Suggestions are welcome. You can e-mail me: dennisv@vuurwerk.nl Best regards, -- Dennis "Riedel" Vink ___~___ Email - dennisv@vuurwerk.nl Unix System Administrator \ | / Phone - +31 23 5111111 Vuurwerk Internet '|.|' PGP - 0xD68A7AAB And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode. # $Id: operguide.txt,v 1.1.1.1 2002/08/14 05:57:32 strtok Exp $