Get your instant IRC robots (bots) at jtan.com

Instabots!

Sounds a lot like a new breakfast cereal, doesn't it? Just add water, and a bot pops up. It's not as easy as that, but it's really close!

What is an instabot?

Have you ever wanted to run an eggdrop IRC bot without the hassle of a shell account, without having to know unix, and how to compile a bot? Have you ever wanted someone to just set the darned thing up for you so all you would have to do is run it from your IRC client?

Well, that is exactly what an instabot is. We do the work, we compile and start the bot, we even make sure the bot continues to run of something happens to the server it's on.

The instabot can sit in your channel, keeping the channel open, and opping your friends, and banning your enemies.

Instabots come with a customizable dedicated vhost IP address that has a reverse name you can configure directly from our control panel.

Customizing an InstaBot

An instabot when installed is a basic eggdrop IRC bot. If you want to jazz it up, you can edit the config file or add TCL scripts. Just FTP to your cutom vhost, log in with your bot ID and password, and upload your scripts to the "scripts" directory.

Bots can be customized a lot of ways. But in general, if you upload a script, you then need to add a line to load the script at the end of your bot's config file. This file has the .conf extension and is located in your root FTP folder. Download it, save a backup, and edit it. If you use Windoze for editing, use a good text editor like PFE. We recommend using TEXT mode for FTP when downloading config files. At the end of the file, add a line like

  source scripts/yourscript.tcl

Upload the edited file. When you "rehash" with a DCC command, the scripts will be live. If you get tired of the scripts, ftp in and delete them, rehash, and they are gone.

How do I get an InstaBot

You simply add one through your JTAN Member page. You'll find them listed under "Full Listing of Services" at the bottom left of the page.

My InstaBot has been set up, how do I get to it?

Connect to the IRC server your bot is on, and join its channel, like you were just going to chat. When you added the instabot through the member page, you received a random password. This is your "hello-word" or "master password".

The first thing you do is say to the bot is

  /MSG botname hello-word

where you need to replace "botname" with the nickname of your bot. In this discussion, anything in italics needs to be replaced by your information. So if your bot is named "fred" and your secret word is "e4gtuui9", then you say

  /MSG fred e4gtuui9

The cryptic hello-word corresponds to the "hello" command on eggdrops. So if you are reading any documentation, substitute your "hello-word" for "hello".

This secret word is to prevent others from signing into your bot and causing trouble.

This command will introduce you to the bot. The next thing you should do is

  /MSG botname PASS yourpersonalpassword

This will set up your personal bot password and allow you to access your bot. Pick one that's easy to remember and hard to guess. Remember, if someone has your personal password, they can do anything they want with your bot. Do not make it the same as the "hello-word". The hello-word is also used as the password for ftp access, so you definitely want to keep these different.

Once you have introduced yourself to the bot and it recognizes you as master you can give out the password to any of your friends you'd like to introduce themselves to the bot so they can get ops and use the bot like you. You introduce yourself to a bot by saying:

  /MSG botname IDENT yourpersonalpassword

There are several command that the bot will respond to by default (more if you have loaded scripts). To get a list of basic commands type:

  /MSG botname HELP

Many many more commands are available via dcc chat. To use DCC to communicate with your bot, type

  /DCC Chat botname 
  /MSG =botname yourpersonalpassword

Note the "=" sign that is required in front of the botname. Also, all DCC commands start with a dot. For example, the ".help" command

  /MSG =botname .help

will list all the DCC commands.

Setting your vHost

IRC people call it a vHost. Ordinary internet people call it a dedicated IP address. Whatever you call it, JTAN instabots come with a free, configurable dedicated IP/vHost that you can set to whatever hostname you want.

Any hostname? Well, there's a small catch. The members page will allow you to set your instabot vHost to have any hostname provided the forward DNS for that name matches the IP your vHost has been assigned. That means you must configure the forward DNS first before you reconfigure your vHost.

For example, let's say you have a JTAN ProShell/DNS account with which you host the domain mydomain.com. As part of hosting, JTAN serves the forward DNS for that domain. Now, suppose you want to set your Instabot to have the vHost bot.mydomain.com. First you need to find the IP address of your Instabot. You can see it on the config page for the bot in the members area. Suppose the address is 192.168.4.5. Now you can go to your DNS config page and set up an "A" record binding bot.mydomain.com to the IP address 192.168.4.5.

After you do that, go read a book. DNS changes take a while. Typically 4 hours, but sometimes several days. You can use sites like this to test. If you don't wait, the forward and reverse DNS won't match and the members page won't let you set the vhost. Once you feel that the forward DNS for bot.mydomain.com resolves to 192.168.4.5, you can go to the Instabot config page and set the vhost there. This sets the bot to use the new vHost as well as setting the reverse DNS for that IP address to match. Again there will be some waiting for the new reverse DNS to spread around the world, but once it has, your vHost is set.

Scripting your Instabot

You can add scripts to your bot with FTP. Connect to the vhost or IP address assigned to your bot by means of a standard FTP program. Upload scripts into the root directory you connect to. Then send the ".rehash" command to the bot. Voila! Your bot now has a script. To get rid of the script, connect with FTP and delete the script. Then ".reshash" again. Script gone.

Learning More

A good starting page to use for learning how to use your bot would be

http://www.egghelp.org/using.htm

And the JTAN IRC FAQ page is also a useful reference

JTAN IRC FAQs