Pladder IRC Bot

This is a personal IRC bot project written by Rasmus and other contributors.

Basic Setup

This is a bare minimum setup for when you only want to develop the bot logic and don't care about running an actual IRC client.

Make sure you have Python 3 installed:

$ sudo apt install python3

Pladder has some dependencies. The recommended way to install them is to use a virtual environment. There is a script that sets up everything in the .venv directory inside the repository. Run it like this:

$ source setup_and_activate_venv.sh
(.venv) $

When the venv is active, you have access to the various bot applications in the shell. Run deactivate to exit the venv. In this readme (.venv) $ will be used to signal that the command needs to be run in the virtual environment.

To run a one-off command in the bot, use pladder-cli like this:

(.venv) $ pladder-cli -c 'echo Hello, world!'

The bot will stores its state in ~/.config/pladder-bot/. If the directory does not exist, it will be created and initialized the first time the bot is run.

Trying out changes

In the venv, the Pladder package is installed in "editable mode". This means that changes made to the bot code will be seen immediately by pladder-cli the next time it is run.

Running the automated tests and checks

Before comitting changes, please run the checked-in test suite:

(.venv) $ ./check.sh

If you are making changes to the dependencies of Pladder, please run the cheks in fresh virtual environment like this:

$ ./full_check.sh

Design Overview

The pladder package installs four console commands:

• a bot service (pladder-bot) that contains the features of the bot (the "business logic", for some value of "business"),
• an IRC client (pladder-irc) that keeps a connection to an IRC server and reacts to commands from users,
• a Mubmle client (pladder-mumble) that keeps a connection to an IRC server and reacts to commands from users,
• a command line tool (pladder-cli) that provides a simple way to run bot commands during development, and

The bot service can serve multiple IRC and Mumble client. In other words, the bot can be present on multiple IRC networks and Mumble servers simultaneously.

The bot parts can be run in two main ways:

• temporarily in the shell during development, and
• automatically in the background, managed by systemd.

I recommend testing both, but starting with the first.

Running manually from the shell

Trying out commands using the command line interface

The pladder-cli command is a convenience tool to run bot commands from a normal shell:

(.venv) $ pladder-cli -command snusk

If run without arguments it will read lines from stdin and run them as commands.

Trying out the bot service

The bot service communicates with its clients using DBus. A test instance of the service can be started like this:

(.venv) $ pladder-bot

To interact with it, run the CLI from another shell:

(.venv) $ pladder-cli --dbus --command snusk

Trying out the IRC client

To connect to an IRC network, first create a configuration file for that network:

$ mkdir -p ~/.config/pladder-irc/
$ editor ~/.config/pladder-irc/raeknet.json

Set up the configuration file like this:

{
    "network": "RaekNet",
    "host": "irc.raek.se",
    "port": 6667,
    "nick": "pladder123",
    "realname": "Pladder IRC Bot",
    "channels": ["#bot"]
}

There are some optional configuration options. If they are not specified, then their default values are used:

    "port": 6667,
    "channels": [],
    "auth": null,
    "user_mode": null,
    "trigger_prefix": "~",
    "reply_prefix": "> ",

Then start a client process:

(.venv) $ pladder-irc --dbus --config raeknet

A --config foo argument results in the file /.config/pladder-irc/foo.json being used. If --dbus is given, then the IRC client runs commands using the bot service (which has to be started separately). If it is not given, then commands are ignored (useful for testing the pure IRC parts).

IRC Authentication

Support for Q authentication on QuakeNet is available. Add an "auth" section like this in the IRC config:

{
    ...
    "auth": {
        "system": "Q",
        "username": "foo",
        "password": "bar"
    }
}

Trying out the Mumble client

The mumble client has an extra dependency that cannot be installed by pip and must be installed through the system package manager. On Debian-based systems (like Ubuntu) install it like this:

$ sudo apt install libopus0

To connect to a mumble server, first create a configuration file for that server. This example will use examplenet.json as the config file name.

$ mkdir -p ~/.config/pladder-mumble/
$ editor ~/.config/pladder-mumble/examplenet.json

Set up the configuration file like this:

{
    "network": "ExampleNet",
    "host": "mumble.example.se",
    "password": "server_password",
    "user": "NAME_OF_YOUR_BOT"
}

There are some optional configuration options. If they are not specified, then their default values are used:

    "port": 64738,
    "application": "Pladder Bot",
    "trigger_prefix": "~",
    "reply_prefix": "> ",
    "certfile": "/path/to/certfile.pem",

The certfile option defaults to ~/.config/pladder-mumble/<config-name>.pem.

After writing a config file, create a certificate file for the Mumble client to use. The certificate contains the user name (same as in the config). Generate a certificate like this:

cd ~/.config/pladder-mumble/
openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 3650 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout examplenet.pem -out examplenet.pem -subj "/CN=NAME_OF_YOUR_BOT"

Then start a mumble client process:

pladder-mumble --dbus --config examplenet

A --config foo argument results in the file /.config/pladder-mumble/foo.json being used. If --dbus is given, then the Mumble client runs commands using the bot service (which has to be started separately). If it is not given, then commands are ignored (useful for testing the pure Mumble parts).

Running automatically using systemd

Systemd is used to manage long-running background services. Services can be run at the system level or on user level. Pladder is designed to be run as a user service (so root is not required for running).

When run from systemd, a different virtual environment is used than for the one used in testing. It resides in ~/.cache/pladder-venv. In addition, the services need some package than cannot be installed by pip, and needs to be installed through the system package manager. On Debian-based systems (such as Ubuntu) they are installed like this:

$ sudo apt install python3-gi libsystemd-dev

Then create the virtual environment for the services (run the commands from the repo root):

$ python3 -m venv --system-site-packages ~/.cache/pladder-venv
$ source ~/.cache/pladder-venv/bin/activate
(pladder-venv) $ pip install .[systemd]

Installing the pladder package does unfortunately not put the systemd unit files into ~/.config/systemd/user where they need to be. There is a tool that does this. Run it like this:

(pladder-venv) $ pladder-systemd update-unit-files
$ systemctl --user daemon-reload

This does not enable the units, but merely makes systemd know about them. If you change the .service files, you need to reinstall the pladder package and rerun the above two commands.

Installing the bot service

After writing the unit files, it is time to enable the service. This means that systemd that it will be started automatically by systemd on boot:

$ systemctl --user enable pladder-bot.service

Since we just enable the service and have not rebooted yet, we also need to start it manually this first time:

$ systemctl --user start pladder-bot.service

The --dbus flag can be given to pladder-cli to run commands on the new background service:

(.venv) $ pladder-cli -c 'echo hello'

To check in on the service you can use this command (which also displays its most recent log lines):

$ systemctl --user status pladder-bot.service

You can display the full log like this (useful for errors):

$ journalctl --user-unit pladder-bot.service -e

If you change the bot code, you can restart the service like this:

$ systemctl --user restart pladder-bot.service

Installing the IRC client

The IRC client service is parameterized (a "template unit"). The idea is that you start one instance for each IRC network. First install the template:

$ systemctl --user link ./[email protected]

Assuming you have a configuration file named foo.json, enable and start a service for it like this (the --now argument is like running start immediately afterwards):

$ systemctl --user enable --now [email protected]

You can watch the log in "follow mode" to see how lines appear:

$ journalctl --user-unit [email protected] -f

Note that the bot service and the IRC client can be started and stopped independently of each other. The DBus connection between them will reconnect automatically.

Installing the Mumble client

Follow the instructions above for IRC, but replace pladder-irc with pladder-mumlbe.

Uninstalling everything

If you haven't set up any systemd services or used the Mumble client, then there is nothing to uninstall. You can delete the .venv directory in the repository to free up space if you want.

If you have set up systemd services, then uninstall them like this:

$ systemctl --user disable --now pladder-bot.service
$ systemctl --user disable --now [email protected]
$ systemctl --user disable --now [email protected]

Use systemctl --user status to list all the services if you don't know their names.

Then use the pladder-systemd tool to remove the unit files:

$ source ~/.cache/pladder-venv/bin/activate
(pladder-venv) $ pladder-systemd remove-unit-files

Then remove the virtual environment used by the services:

$ rm -rf ~/.cache/pladder-venv

Lastly, you can uninstall the system packages needed by the Mumble client and the services (but be sure to check that this doesn't uninstall any packages you need):

$ sudo apt remove libopus0 python3-gi libsystemd-dev