This release fixes the problem encountered in the previous version, whereby the ircd would not respect the ban.db location specified in 'include/config.h'.
Part of the solution for this was to create a bandb setting within the ircd's configuration file. This enables the administrator to easily set the path used by the ircd to locate the database - instead of relying on hard coded values. The change seems like a natural progression and helps with updating databases.
For the port to accommodate the new option, the redundant 'rsdb_sqlite3.c' patch used in 3.0.0 has been deleted, and the Makefile adjusted to set the FreeBSD specific location of the ban.db file within the example configuration files.
When upgrading from a previous version, admins may wish to add the new configuration option to their ircd.conf like so:
serverinfo {
/* bandb: path to the ban database - default is PREFIX/etc/ban.db */
bandb = "/var/db/ircd-ratbox/ban.db";
};
Ziplinks and SSL
In this release, work has been done on making ziplink and SSL server connections work again. For many small networks the benefit of using ziplinks over SSL server-to-server connections is negligible; but for larger networks, such as EFnet, this can be rather handy.
Connection Throttling
If the server detects clients repeatedly trying to connect to the ircd, it will throttle and/or add their IPs to a reject list that basically ignores them for a period of time. This feature is mostly designed to suppress broken clients or drones, and effectively minimizes the resource draining effect they have.
Unfortunately, sometimes legitimate users who have made a large number of connection attempts or who are behind a NAT gateway, can also trigger the throttling process. To help identify these situations, opers can now set the +r usermode for the ircd to display throttling information. '/stats T' has also been adjusted to include throttling data.
Software Changes
Full list of changes in the ircd-ratbox release:
- Call rb_helper_close on bandb errors to kill off old bandb processes.
- Report correct files/line numbers for spoof warnings.
- SID in the serverinfo struct should be 4 bytes, not 3.
- Rebuild the included ircd_lexer.c.
- Fix ports and /dev/poll for Solaris.
- Report libratbox version on -version and /info.
- libratbox version info includes SSL info.
- Fix installing when using install-sh.
- Re-enable ziplinks + SSL server connections.
- Fix a gnutls related core dump.
- Add support for a serverinfo::bandb setting in ircd.conf for the ban database.
- Report adding throttles when an oper is set umode +r.
- Report throttle stats in /stats T.
— posted by Moggie
