[TriLUG] gaim/ircd help

[Joseph Mack NA3T]

On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Brian Henning wrote:

> Hm.  Forgive me if I'm telling you things you already know, but your replies 
> make it sound like you're confusing services.
>
> IRC =/=/= "Instant Messaging"

OK I'm confused.

> (that is, "not congruent"..  IRC is relatively instant, but.. well, anyway: 
> )
>
> IRC is one form of real-time text communication. One could call it a form of 
> "instant messaging" and not be entirely wrong.  However, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, and 
> others are not IRC.  They have their own protocols, ports, etc.

OK IRC is a protocol. It's one of family of protocols used 
for real-time text communiction (is that the correct 
lingo?). (Wikipedia calls it Online chatting.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_chat

> None of the IM services I've ever used require any particular inbound 
> firewalling, as long as your firewall is set to allow RELATED,ESTABLISHED.

RELATED is for multiport protocols (like ftp) and you need a 
module for each protocol?

My firewall (gShield), whose configuration is a bit beyond 
me, has an option for conntracking IRC. This isn't what I 
want is it? - this is for conntracking, not filtering 
(right?). I do have ip_conntrack_irc.o and ip_nat_irc.o in 
/lib/modules/....

Looking up my kernel (2.4.28) config, I only see an option 
to build iptables, but no finer options (like irc helper 
modules). Do I need user space modules for iptables?

> Only in the case of things like direct-connect might specific inbound rules 
> be necessary.

which I take it aren't involved here?

> For all the "commercial" protocols (AIM, Yahoo, MSN...), gaim knows how to 
> get connected, as it simply has to resolve one or two hostnames that point at 
> servers run by the companies (and that's why there isn't a server option for 
> those services).  IRC, on the other hand, is not centralized, and to connect, 
> one must know the hostname of an IRC service.  Some common ones are freenode, 
> EFnet, and DALnet.
>
> If your kid is trying to get onto one of the commercial IM services, setting 
> up a test case using a local IRC server isn't likely to tell you anything 
> useful.

sure. but while I can't connect to myself (client and server 
on one linux box), there's not much hope of me figuring out 
his problem. I was hoping to show him connecting to my 
server first with a client for an open protocol.

> Hope all that was somewhat helpful :-)

I'm much less confused now :-)

Thanks Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
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Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!