20190824-20240707
codybot is an IRC bot written with the C programming language, providing users
with fortune cookies, jokes, oneliner C/C++ compilation, shell access, text colorization,
ascii art, special characters and weather per city. It was inspired by candide on
Libera.chat, a great bot written in Perl (see https://github.com/pragma-/pbot/).
The bot can connect to irc.libera.chat:6697 or any specified server and port;
it defaults to port 6697 with SSL.
In order to compile the source code into an executable, some dependencies are
required to be installed. On RPM-based systems, install glibc-devel binutils
gcc make file-devel openssl-devel libcurl-devel json-c-devel. On DEB-based
systems install libc6-dev binutils gcc make libmagic-dev libssl-dev
libcurl4-openssl-dev libjson-c-dev. On Arch install make gcc.
To compile the program, just run make within the source directory, and run with
./codybot -n YourBotNick
(Personally I run the bot in a docker container to limit general filesystem access
via the !sh command; see the "chroot" and "docker" sections below.)
Run ./codybot --help to see all program options.
There is no installation mechanism, you should use the source directory or move
the files where you want. The files data/ascii.txt, data/chars.txt, data/fortunes.txt,
data/jokes.txt and stats must be in the program's current working directory
otherwise the program will not run. Other control files (detailed below) must
also be in the current working directory.
Before running for the first time, you should also run
scripts/initial-setup
so something like !sh rm importantfiles won't be able to do any damage;
see #1
You should register and identify your bot nick with the IRC server's NickServ,
if it has one (not all IRC networks do). You can type /msg NickServ help in
your favorite connected IRC client (mIRC, irssi, weechat, hexchat, ...).
Otherwise you can identify to NickServ by typing id yourpasswordhere or
privmsg NickServ :identify passhere in the terminal running the codybot program.
Another console-only command you need to run is join #channel_name_here.
Note that bots are usually unwelcome on IRC networks, especially in popular channels,
and uninvited bots are not permitted, so always get permission if you don't own
the channel. (If you created a channel by joining an empty one, you now own it,
so you can give yourself permission to run codybot.)
The bot responds to commands on its stdin (usually the terminal you run it from),
and in any channels it's joined. Commands in channels are only recognized if they
start with the command prefix, which defaults to exclamation point (!).
Do not include it when typing to its stdin. Some commands can only be used from stdin,
they are exit, quit, curch, msg and id.
In the following examples, "send !command" means send the command prefix and
command as a message to a channel that the bot has joined. "type command" means
send command to stdin of the running codybot process (usually by typing it into the terminal).
This differentiation may also be implied by the presence or absense of a leading prefix.
To see available commands, send !help.
To trigger a fortune cookie, send !fortune. The fortune cookie database file is data/fortunes.txt.
It's made of files in /usr/share/games/fortunes using the system-provided fortune package.
(see https://github.com/shlomif/fortune-mod)
To get a random joke send !joke. This database is hand written using https://www.funnyshortjokes.com
content and is far from containing all the site's jokes! There's 25 jokes as of 20200510.
To get astronomical informations such as sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset times, phase
and illumination from https://www.weatherapi.com send !astro citynamehere;
which should return something like
"Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Sunrise 06:01 AM, sunset 06:30 PM, moonrise 08:01 AM, moonset 08:40, phase Waning Gibbous, illumination 91%"
Note that you will need an API key to use this feature (It's free).
Just put the key in the api.key file.
To get weather report from https://www.weatherapi.com send !weather citynamehere;
this should return something like
"Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Partly cloudy, 2.6C/36.7F feels like -2.4*C/27.7F 15.0kmh/9.3mph, gust 20.4kmh/12.7mph, 0.0mm"
To run a shell command from the chat onto the host of codybot, send !sh command and args
e.g. !sh ls /home/codybot. You can disable this by creating a file called sh_disable
(as always, in the program's current directory). You can also type sh_enable or sh_disable
in the console, or !sh_enable or !sh_disable in the channel (requires to be in the admins list).
The other commands are:
!about to retrieve the author and source code link.
!admins to show current administrators of the bot who can run special commands like !admins reload.
!ascii to show an ascii art image.
!cc printf("This is awesome!\n"); to compile C one-liners.
!chars to show special UTF-8 characters.
!colorize SomeTextHere to put random IRC color codes between each characters of the given text.
!date to show current date and time with possible "utc-/+N" argument.
!dict TermHere to retrieve the definition of a given term from dict.org.
!foldoc AnyComputerTerm to retrieve the definition of a given term from the foldoc computer-related database.
!rainbow SomeText (same but with ordered rainbow colors).
!rawmsg PRIVMSG ChanServ :OP #codybot esselfe to send a raw message to the server (admins only).
!stats to show how many fortunes have been given.
!time CityNameHere to retrieve current time in a city.
!uptime to get for how long the bot have been running.
!version to show current bot's version.
If you want to use the chroot mechanism, you have to download the minimal chroot archive and extract it into the source directory. The latest chroot is available at
- https://hobby.esselfe.ca/codybot/chroot.tar.xz (Lunar minimal, 5.6MB download, extracts to 26MB)
- https://hobby.esselfe.ca/codybot/chroot-alpine.tar.xz (3.4MB to 73MB)
- https://hobby.esselfe.ca/codybot/chroot-arch.tar.xz (8.3MB to 40MB)
- https://hobby.esselfe.ca/codybot/chroot-aws.tar.xz (11MB to 66MB)
- https://hobby.esselfe.ca/codybot/chroot-debian.tar.xz (120MB to 370MB)
- https://hobby.esselfe.ca/codybot/chroot-gentoo.tar.xz (244MB to 1.2GB)
To run all shell commands in a locked chroot, create a file called sh_lock or
type !sh_lock or !sh_unlock. You have to run as root:
chroot chroot /bin/bash
su - dummy
run.sh
You must ensure that the codybot user can write to
/home/dummy/run.fifo inside the chroot. The files starting with
cmd. also need to be owned by the dummy user.
Note that the dummy user must exist with the same UID in both the host
and in the chroot.
Update 210228 - new docker image available!
You can now run codybot more safely by using a small or full docker container.
Install docker, make sure the services are started (containerd+docker), and run those commands to fetch and start the image: (replace "small" with "full" if you want to)
docker pull esselfe/lunar-codybot:small
docker run -it esselfe/lunar-codybot:small bash
or
docker pull esselfe/debian-codybot:small
docker run -it esselfe/debian-codybot:small bash
Once in the container, run:
exec su -
tmux
su - user
cd codybot
echo 'a8b2c3d4e5f6...your_www.weatherapi.com_key_here' > api.key
./api-fetcher &
scripts/logd.sh &
<ctrl+b><c>
su - codybot
cd codybot
./codybot -n NewNickHere
Personally I made a 1GB partition on my host just for the bot and
its users' usage, then mount it (on the host) to /mnt/codybot-data,
then start the container this way instead:
docker run -it -v /mnt/codybot-data:/home/user/codybot/tmp esselfe/lunar-codybot bash
To make /home/user/tmp the only possible location to write, run inside the container:
rm -rf /tmp
ln -sv /home/user/codybot/tmp /tmp
You can also limit the permitted storage size by adding "--tmpfs /home/user/codybot/tmp:rw,size=100M"
Update 231222 - new qemu image available!
You can now run codybot more safely by using a virtual machine.
The command I use is:
qemu-system-x86_64 -vga std -display gtk -m 1024 -cpu host -smp 4 --enable-kvm -drive file=Lunar-codybot.qcow2,if=virtio -net user,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22 -net nic
https://qemu.esselfe.ca/codybot/
Update 240707 - new VirtualBox disk image available!
https://vbox.esselfe.ca/Codybot.vdi
Default credentials: User root, password codybot
- Code last changes: https://github.com/esselfe/codybot/commits
- Blinkenshell project:
- Main releases: https://github.com/esselfe/codybot/releases
- Archives:
Enjoy!