ZNC
ZNC is an advanced IRC bouncer that can establish such a permanent connection to several IRC networks and channels so your IRC client (or multiple clients) can disconnect/reconnect without losing the chat session, while appearing as a single user to other users.
Setting up ZNC
Install the package that contains ZNC.
apk add znc
Create a ZNC configuration file, this command will automatically create znc.conf in /var/lib/znc/configs/. You will be asked to enter some information.
rc-service znc setup
Listen on port: 5000 Listen using SSL: yes Listen using both IPv4 and IPv6: no Username: your_username Enter password: your_password Confirm password: your_password Nick: nick Alternate nick: nick_ Real name: optional Bind host: try to leave empty Set up a network? no Launch ZNC now? no
htop
or rc-status
if ZNC is running.
Start ZNC as service.
rc-service znc start
Run ZNC in a subdomain using NGINX
Configure the ZNC webadmin page
Open the ZNC webadmin page https://YOUR_SERVER_IP:5000
in your browser. Accept the insecure certificate and go forward.
Log in with your username and password and go to global settings.
We want to maintain the webadmin connections separate from the IRC connections.
Let's make a listening port for the IRC connections.
In Listen Port(s) add:
Port: 6697 BindHost: * SSL: on IPv4: on IPv6: off IRC: on HTTP: off URIPrefix: /
Save the information you entered and stop the service for now.
rc-service znc stop
Edit the configuration file.
vim /lib/znc/configs/znc.conf
Your configuration file should look like this:
Contents of /lib/znc/configs/znc.conf
Start ZNC as service.
rc-service znc start
Configure NGINX
Install NGINX if you haven't already.
apk add nginx
Create a configuration file in conf.d separated from the main configuration files.
vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/znc.your_domain.com.conf
The file should look something like below.
Contents of /etc/nginx/conf.d/znc.your_domain.com.conf
Restart the NGINX service.
rc-service nginx restart
Set up SSL certificates
Install Certbot and its module to work with NGINX.
apk add certbot cerbot-nginx
Run Certbot, this program will create Let's Encrypt SSL certificates for free. You will have to manually or automatically renew them every month.
certbot
Restart NGINX and you're done. Your webadmin page will be automatically running the SSL certificate made by Let's Encrypt.
rc-service nginx restart
Now we will replace the znc.pem certificate with the Let's Encrypt certificates for any person who wants to connect to our IRC bouncer. For this we need to concatenate two important files into znc.pem
{{cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/privkey.pem /etc/letsencrypt/live/YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/fullchain.pem > /var/lib/znc/znc.pem}}