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I'm not running this java version any more, please see thisirccat clone in go.

As incat to IRC.

IRCcat does 2 things:

1. Listens on a specific ip:port and writes incoming data to an IRC channel.This is useful for sending various announcements and log messages to ircfrom shell scripts, Nagios and other services.

2. Hands off commands issued on irc to a handler program (eg: shell script)and responds to irc with the output of the handler script. This onlyhappens for commands addressed to irccat: or prefixed with ?.(easily extend irccat functionality with your own scripts)

Edit the irccat.xml so it knows which irc server, channel etc..Check you have sun jvm >=1.5 (java -version)

This will build and package irccat as a jar:

$ ant dist

Then, using the appropriate config file:

$ ant -Dconfigfile=./examples/irccat.xml run

Also, you'll probably want to install netcat.

By default IRCCat listens on 127.0.0.1:12345, and sends data to thedefault (first) channels. In a networked server environment you will probably want to make it listen on the private LAN interface.

Examples:

$ echo "Hello World" | netcat -q0 localhost 12345$ tail -f /var/log/www/error.log | netcat localhost 12345

In a server environment, consider adding a hostname to your internal DNS orusing a virtual IP for irccat to listen on, in case you want to move irccatto another box later.

To send to a specific channel rather than the default, put the channel nameas the first word in the data (the channel name will be stripped):

$ echo "#mychannel hello world" | netcat -q0 machinename 12345

This sends "hello world" to #mychannel

First word defines the recipients, you can use comma separated list.

Examples:

- "#chan blah blah"  just sends to #chan- "@RJ psst, this is a pm"  just sends via PM to user RJ- "#channel1,#channel2,@RJ,@Russ blah blah this is the message"  this sends to 2 channels, and 2 users (RJ, Russ)- "#* Attention, something important"  this sends to all channels the bot is in- "#chan %REDroses are red%NORMAL, grass is #GREENgreen#NORMAL"  you can use colors too, see IRCCat.java for the full list;  Either "#" or "%" will work.

To change the topic in a channel (rather than sending a message), usethe prefix %TOPIC.

$ echo "%TOPIC #mychannel hello world" | netcat -q0 machinename 12345

This changes the topic of #mychannel to "hello world" (assuming the bothas permission to set the topic)

Second word defines the recipient channels. You can use a comma separatedlist. Nick recipients will be accepted, but silently ignored.

Examples:

• "%TOPIC #chan new topic"just changes the topic of #chan

• "%TOPIC #channel1,#channel2 this channel is great"this changes the topics of two channels

• "%TOPIC #* Important Topic"this changes the topics in all channels the bot is in

There are a handful of built-in commands for instructing the bot at runtime.

Built-in commands are prefixed with a !

!join #chan pass- joins another channel. pass is optional!part #chan- parts chan!channels- lists channels the bot is in!spam blah blah..- repeats your message in all joined channels!exit- System.exit()

Any command (?.. !..) uttered in a channel with irccat in is executed andimplicitly trusted.

Any command PMed to irccat is ignored unless the useris joined to the default (first) channel in the config file.

svn hooks let you announce commits etc.For example, try this in your SVN repo/hooks/post-commit file:

REPOS="$1"REV="$2"LOG=/usr/bin/svnlook log -r $REV $REPOSAUTHOR=/usr/bin/svnlook author -r $REV $REPOSecho "SVN commit by $AUTHOR (r$REV) '$LOG'http://web-svn-interface.example.com/?rev=$REV" | netcat -q0 machinename 12345

Buried in our nagios config is this, from misccommands.cfg:

define command {command_name host-notify-by-irccommand_line /bin/echo "#sys Nagios: Host '$HOSTALIAS$' is$HOSTSTATE$ - Info:$OUTPUT$" | /bin/netcat -q 1 irccathost 12345}

define command {command_name service-notify-by-irccommand_line /bin/echo "#sys Nagios: Service$SERVICEDESC$ on '$HOSTALIAS$' is$SERVICESTATE$ - Info:$OUTPUT$" | /bin/netcat -q 1 irccathost 12345}

And in contacts.cfg:

define contact{contact_name irccatalias irccatservice_notification_period 24x7host_notification_period 24x7service_notification_options w,c,rhost_notification_options d,rservice_notification_commands service-notify-by-irchost_notification_commands host-notify-by-ircemail blah@blah}

Email:rj@metabrew.comWeb:http://www.last.fm/user/RJ (work, and the reason irccat exists)Web:http://www.metabrew.com/ (blog)Irc: irc://irc.audioscrobbler.com/audioscrobbler