Echo

A federated IRC services daemon, written in Rust.

Echo runs the services side of an IRC network, the accounts, channels, and operator tooling, as a set of pseudo-clients (NickServ, ChanServ, and the rest) linked to an ircd over its server-to-server protocol. State is an append-only event log folded into memory, and that log gossips between nodes, so several Echo instances on different servers share one account and channel database with no central store.

Clean-room work, informed by the ideas behind modern event-log and gossip services, not derived from any project's source.

Highlights

• Federated. Every change is an event; nodes exchange logs and converge. Account identity is global across the network, while channel state stays with the node that owns it.
• Event-sourced. State is a fold over an append-only log. Restart replays it, compaction folds it, replication ships it, all through one code path.
• Modular. The core is one crate. Each service and each ircd protocol is a separate crate depending only on the echo-api SDK, so a new service or a new ircd is one new crate.
• Memory-safe. No manual memory management and no data races, in a domain that has historically shipped both.

Quick start

git clone https://git.devtronic.pro/fedserv/echo.git
cd echo
cp config.example.toml config.toml   # set the uplink host and link password
cargo run --release -- config.toml

Echo links to an InspIRCd uplink out of the box. Point config.toml at your ircd's server port and add a matching <link> block on the ircd side. The full reference is on the Configuration page.

Services

Every service is a first-class pseudo-client, all started by default.

Service	Role
NickServ	account registration, identification, grouped nicks, SASL
ChanServ	channel registration, access lists, mode-lock, auto-op
BotServ	per-channel bots, fantasy commands, kickers
HostServ	virtual hosts, self-serve and operator-approved
MemoServ	messages to accounts, delivered online or not
OperServ	akills, DEFCON, jupes, session limits, log search
StatServ	network and channel statistics
GroupServ	account groups whose members inherit channel access
ChanFix	reop an opless channel from accumulated op-time
HelpServ	a help-desk ticket queue for operators
InfoServ	network bulletins shown on connect and login
ReportServ	user abuse reports feeding the operator audit trail
DiceServ	dice and math for tabletop games
DictServ	dictionary, thesaurus and reference lookups (dict.org), opt-in

Architecture

Three layers, each a clean boundary:

• Protocol turns raw server-to-server lines into a normalized event and action vocabulary. The engine never sees a raw line, so supporting another ircd is one new crate.
• Engine holds the live network view and the event-sourced store, and routes messages to services. Services reach it only through the Store and NetView traits, keeping the log, gossip, and credential material out of a module's reach.
• Services are pseudo-clients, one crate each, implementing a single Service trait.

The full write-up is in the wiki: Architecture and Federation.

Documentation

The wiki has the detail:

• Architecture — the engine, the store, the module boundary
• Federation — gossip, the global/local scope model, conflict resolution
• Services — every service and its commands
• Configuration — the config.toml reference
• Directory API — the gRPC account and channel directory for websites
• Writing a Module — build your own service or ircd link
• Deployment — running Echo in production: install, durability, backups

Status

Echo links to a live InspIRCd uplink and runs the full service suite over an event-sourced, gossip-replicated store. It supports SASL (PLAIN, SCRAM-SHA-256/512, EXTERNAL), an optional mutually-authenticated TLS peer link, an email subsystem for registration confirmation and password recovery, and a gRPC directory API for websites to mirror accounts and channels. It is verified against a real ircd with the irctest compliance suite.

License

Not yet declared. This is original, clean-room work; a license will be set before any public release.