-README for the ircu2.10.11 series
-PLEASE READ THIS COMPLETELY BEFORE RUNNING THE SERVER!
-
-The u2.10.11 is the most advanced version of Undernet ircd to date.
-There are still plenty of rough edges, but many things have been
-cleaned up and redone. The major changes for this version are
-documented in RELEASE.NOTES, in this directory. A good description of
-compiling and installing the server is included in INSTALL. Further
-documentation on many aspects of ircu is contained in the doc
-subdirectory.
-
-IF YOU ARE PLANNING ON USING IRCU IN A CHROOT "JAIL," YOU MUST READ
-doc/readme.chroot! This document describes the intricacies of using
-the Undernet ircd daemon in such an environment.
-
-This version of ircd no longer has the "make compile" step; most
-compile-time options have become features which can be set in the
-configuration file, or on the fly online through the SET and RESET
-commands; the current values may be obtained with GET. The remaining
-compile-time options are set through arguments to ./configure. A list
-of the compile-time options may be obtained with "./configure --help";
-see RELEASE.NOTES for a more comprehensive description of each
-option. All features are documented in doc/readme.features, and log
-configuration is documented in doc/readme.log.
-
-This server version is not compatible with Undernet ircd releases
-prior to u2.10.10, nor is it compatible with any other version of
-ircd. Also note that this version incorporates the features requested
-by the Undernet administrators in CFV 165; if you don't want these
-hiding features enabled, you must add -DINCLUDED_ircd_policy_h to
-CFLAGS prior to running ./configure.
-
-For more information on the changes in this release, see RELEASE.NOTES
-and ChangeLog, both in this directory. You may also reference the CVS
-log on the Undernet Coder Committee web page at
-http://coder-com.undernet.org/.
+
+ Welcome to ircu2.10.12, the Undernet IRC daemon
+
+Version u2.10.12 of the Undernet ircd incorporates many new features
+over its predecessor, and we feel that using it will make you very
+happy indeed.
+
+New features include:
+ - A completely rewritten network event engine, which make full use
+ of the asynchronous event engines available in FreeBSD (kqueue)
+ and Solaris (/dev/poll), resulting in dramaticaly improved
+ performance.
+ - New F: (feature) lines in ircd.conf, and the GET/SET commands allow
+ many settings to be changed dynamically, rather than by with compile-
+ time configuration.
+ - The new "account" feature added to the P10 protocol, allows people to
+ remain logged in to service bots (i.e., gnuworld) during a netsplit.
+ This means people will not have to login again once the network rejoins.
+
+INSTALLATION
+
+Please see the INSTALL file for installation instructions, for hints on how
+to best configure your OS for running ircu under high load, see the various
+README.<platform> files.
+
+COMPATIBILITY
+
+This version of ircu will only work with servers that use the P10 protocol,
+some of the new features will only work between ircu2.10.12 servers.
+
+GENERAL PERFORMANCE HINTS
+
+For platform-specific notes and hints, see the platform-specific
+sections below. These notes apply to servers that will serve large
+numbers (thousands) of clients simultaneously. If your server serves
+a small amount of users, the defaults should work well enough.
+
+ - Run an OS that supports an asynchronous network event engine; currently
+ these are FreeBSD (kqueue), and Solaris (/dev/poll); possibly other BSDs
+ will also support kqueue. This will have a dramatic effect on performance.
+ - Make things as lean as possible: Make your server dedicated to ircu,
+ disable anything that is not neccesary, and build a custom kernel (where
+ possible).
+ - Tune kernel parameters as described in the platform-specific
+ sections below.
+ - With many clients connecting each second, ircu will be doing lots of DNS
+ lookups. Make sure that the DNS server(s) in your /etc/resolv.conf are as
+ close as possible, or run a local caching DNS server on your IRC server.
+
+TIME SYNCHRONIZATION
+
+Many things can and will go horribly wrong when the clocks on the servers
+on your network become (too far) out of sync. It is therefore highly
+recommended that all servers run a version of ntpd that will keep their
+clocks from going astray.
+
+INFORMATION HIDING
+
+As per undernet-admins CFV-165, this server contains code that will,
+by default, hide certain information from ordinary users. If you do
+not want this, override the default "HIS" feature settings in your
+ircd.conf.
+
+MORE INFORMATION
+
+For more information on this software, see the included documentation
+in the doc/ directory, as well as http://coder-com.undernet.org.
+
+For general information on the Undernet, vist http://www.undernet.org
+
+Happy IRCing!
+
+RUNNING THIS SERVER ON LINUX
+
+If you run Linux 2.6 or above (or 2.4 with appropriate patches), ircu
+can use the epoll family of system calls for much more efficient
+checks of which connections are active. Most pre-epoll systems will
+use 100% CPU with 2000 clients; with epoll, a server may use only a
+few percent of CPU with the same load.
+
+To handle that many connections, the ircd must be started with a high
+enough file descriptor resource. Check your distribution's docs on
+how to set the global and per-user limits according to your expected
+load.
+
+RUNNING THIS SERVER ON FREEBSD
+
+When running on FreeBSD, ircu can make use of the kqueue() event engine, which
+results in much improved performance over the old poll()-based method. kqueue
+is included in the more recent 4.x releases of FreeBSD.
+
+In order for ircu to be able to serve many clients simultaneously, you need
+to increase the maximum allowable number of open files in the system. To do
+this, add commands such as the following during your system's boot sequence:
+
+sysctl -w kern.maxfiles=16384
+sysctl -w kern.maxfilesperproc=16384
+
+Unless you will be serving thousands of clients simultaneously, you will not
+need to do the following, unless of course you just can't stand having a
+system that is not optimized to its limits :)
+
+Build a custom kernel: Make your kernel as lean as possible by removing all
+drivers and options you will not need. The following parameters will affect
+performance, they are listed with suggested values only. For more information
+on what they do exactly, see FreeBSD's documentation.
+
+maxusers 2048
+options NMBCLUSTERS=65535
+options ICMP_BANDLIM
+
+Also, you may wish to run the following at system startup (from /etc/rc.local,
+or whichever other method you prefer):
+
+sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.rfc1323=1
+sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0
+sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.restrict_rst=1
+sysctl -w kern.ipc.maxsockbuf=2097152
+sysctl -w kern.ipc.somaxconn=2048
+
+Created by Sengaia <sengaia@undernet.org>, July 20 2002.
+
+RUNNING THIS SERVER ON SOLARIS
+
+When running on Solaris, ircu can make use of the /dev/poll event engine, which
+results in much improved performance over the old poll()-based method. Solaris
+versions 8 and 9 include /dev/poll out of the box, for Solaris 7 you will have
+to grab and install Patch-ID 106541-21.
+
+In order to increase the number of clients ircu can handle, add lines such as
+the following to /etc/system:
+
+* set hard limit on file descriptors
+set rlim_fd_max = 16384
+* set soft limit on file descriptors
+set rlim_fd_cur = 8192
+
+For more useful hints see http://www.sean.de/Solaris/soltune.html
+
+Created by Sengaia <sengaia@undernet.org> on July 20, 2002.
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