website/content/docs/cli.md

CLI tools

The echoircd binary dispatches on its first argument. Any first argument that is not one of the subcommands below is treated as the path to a config file to boot the server with.

Boot the server

echoircd [config]

Loads the config (default echoircd.conf), binds the plaintext / TLS / S2S / WebSocket / RPC / metrics listeners, and runs the single-threaded core.

rehash

echoircd rehash [config]

Signal a running server to reload its configuration in place — it finds the process via the pidfile (or a /proc scan) and sends SIGHUP, then exits without booting a new server. Most options re-apply live, and the TLS certificate is re-read, with no restart and no disconnects.

checkconfig

echoircd checkconfig [config]

Parse a config and print a deterministic, sorted dump of every key/value it produces — validate a config before deploying it, or diff two configs (for example the block form against the legacy flat form). Exits non-zero on an unreadable file or an empty servername.

mkpasswd

echoircd mkpasswd [cost]

Read a password from stdin (never from the command line, to keep it out of ps and shell history) and print its bcrypt hash — a config-ready value for an oper block's password. Takes an optional bcrypt cost (default 11).

printf '%s' 'my-secret' | echoircd mkpasswd

The in-daemon MKPASSWD command is separate from this CLI subcommand: the command supports md5/sha1/sha256/sha512/pbkdf2 for oper-issued credentials, while the CLI produces a bcrypt hash.