construct/README.md

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| THE CONSTRUCT HAS NOT BEEN RELEASED FOR PUBLIC USE. THIS IS FOR DEVELOPERS AND DEMONSTRATION    |
| ONLY. IT IS NOT COMPLETE AND REQUIRES EXPERT KNOWLEDGE TO USE. YOU ARE STILL ENCOURAGED TO TRY  |
| THIS SOFTWARE AND HELP US, BUT IN AN EXPERIMENTAL SETTING ONLY.                                 |
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This — is The Construct

Fast. Secure. Feature Rich. Community Lead.

IRCd was a free and open source server which facilitated real-time communication over the internet. It was started by Jarkko Oikarinen in 1988 at the University of Oulu and its derivatives underpinned the major IRC networks for decades.

Due to its age and stagnation since the mid-2000's, a growing number of proprietary cloud services are now filling the vacuum of innovation. In 2014 a new approach was proposed to reinvigorate real-time communication for free and open source software: a federation of networks known as the matrix.

IRCd has been rewritten for the global federation of networks    

This is the Construct — the community's own Matrix server. It is designed to be fast and highly scalable, and to be developed by volunteer contributors over the internet. This mission strives to make the software easy to understand, modify, audit, and extend. It remains true to its roots with its modular design and having minimal requirements.

Even though all of the old code has been rewritten, the same spirit and philosophy of its predecessors is still obvious throughout.

Similar to the legacy IRC protocol's origins, Matrix wisely leverages technologies in vogue for its day to aid the virility of implementations. A vibrant and growing ecosystem already exists.

Join us in #test:zemos.net / #zemos-test:matrix.org

Installation

Dependencies

• Boost library 1.66+
• RocksDB library 5.16.6.
• Sodium library for curve ed25519.
• OpenSSL library for HTTPS TLS / X.509.
• Magic library for MIME type recognition.

Optional

• zlib or lz4 or snappy database compressions.
• GraphicsMagick for media thumbnails.

Build tools

• GNU C++ compiler, automake, autoconf, autoconf2.13, autoconf-archive, libtool.

• A platform capable of loading dynamic shared objects at runtime is required.

DOWNLOAD

At this phase of development the best thing to do is pull the master branch and use the latest head.

The head of the master branch is consistent and should be safe to pull without checking out a release tag. When encountering a problem with the latest head on master that is when a release tag should be sought.

BUILD

Please follow the standalone build instructions in the next section until this notice is removed.

./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

Additional documentation for building can be found in doc/BUILD.md

BUILD (standalone)

This section is intended to allow building with dependencies that have not made their way to mainstream systems. Important notes that may affect you:

• GCC: Ubuntu Xenial (16.04) users must use a PPA to obtain GCC-7 or greater; don't forget to export CXX=g++-7 before running ./configure on that system.

• Boost: The required version is available through apt as boost-all-dev on Ubuntu Cosmic (18.10). All earlier releases (including 18.04 LTS) can configure with --with-included-boost as instructed below.

• RocksDB: The required version is available through apt as librocksdb-dev on Ubuntu Disco (19.04). All earlier releases (including 18.04 LTS) can configure with --with-included-rocksdb as instructed below.

STANDALONE BUILD PROCEDURE

./autogen.sh
mkdir build

• The install directory may be this or another place of your choosing.
• If you decide elsewhere, make sure to change the --prefix in the ./configure statement below.

./configure --prefix=$PWD/build --with-included-boost --with-included-rocksdb

• The --with-included-* will fetch, configure and build the dependencies included as submodules.

make install

SETUP

• For standalone builds you will need to add the included lib directories in your git repo to the library path: export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/src/deps/boost/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/src/deps/rocksdb:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

• We will refer to your server as host.tld. For those familiar with matrix: this is your origin and mxid @user:host.tld hostpart. If you delegate your server's location to something like matrix.host.tld:1234 we refer to this as your servername.

Construct clusters all share the same origin but each individual instance of the daemon has a unique servername.

1. Execute

   There are two arguments: <origin> [servername]. If the servername argument is missing, the origin will be used for it instead.

   bin/construct host.tld
   

   There is no configuration file.

   Log messages will appear in terminal concluding with notice IRCd RUN.

2. Strike ctrl-c on keyboard

   The command-line console will appear.

3. Create a general listener socket by entering the following command:

   net listen matrix * 8448 privkey.pem cert.pem chain.pem
   

   • matrix is your name for this listener; you can use any name.
   • * and 8448 is the local address and port to bind.
   • privkey.pem and cert.pem and chain.pem are paths (ideally absolute paths) to PEM-format files for the listener's TLS.

   The Matrix Federation Tester should now pass. Browse to https://matrix.org/federationtester/api/report?server_name=host.tld and verify "AllChecksOK": true

4. To use a web-based client like Riot, configure the "webroot" directory to point at Riot's webapp/ directory by entering the following:

   conf set ircd.webroot.path /path/to/riot-web/webapp/
   mod reload webroot
   

5. Browse to https://host.tld:8448/ and register a user.

Additional Notes

Recovering from broken configurations

If your server ever fails to start from an errant conf item: you can override any item using an environmental variable before starting the program. To do this simply replace the '.' characters with '_' in the name of the item when setting it in the environment. The name is otherwise the same, including its lower case.

Recovering from database corruption

In very rare cases after a hard crash the journal cannot completely restore data before the crash. Due to the design of rocksdb and the way we apply it for Matrix, data is lost in chronological order starting from the most recent transaction (matrix event). The database is consistent for all events up until the first corrupt event, called the point-in-time.

When any loss has occurred the daemon will fail to start normally. To enable point-in-time recovery use the command-line option -pitrecdb at the next invocation.

Developers

Generate doxygen using /usr/bin/doxygen tools/doxygen.conf the target directory is doc/html. Browse to doc/html/index.html.

Plan

Roadmap for service

• Phase One: Matrix clients using HTTPS.
• Phase Two: Legacy IRC network TS6 protocol.
• Phase Three: Legacy IRC clients using RFC1459 / RFC2812 legacy grammars.

Roadmap for deployments

The deployment mode is a macro of configuration variables which tune the daemon for how it is being used. Modes mostly affect aspects of local clients.

• Personal: One or few users. Few default restrictions; higher log output.
• Company: Hundreds of users. Moderate default restrictions.
• Public: Thousands of users. Untrusting configuration defaults.

Roadmap for innovation

• Phase Zero: Core libircd: Utils; Modules; Contexts; JSON; Database; HTTP; etc...
• Phase One: Matrix Protocol: Core VM; Core modules; Protocol endpoints; etc...
• Phase Two: Construct Cluster: Kademlia sharding of events; Maymounkov's erasure codes.