The broadcast and MOTD features need no command line switches, to activate
them you merely make sure the required files (/tmp/ircbroadcast
and
/etc/motd.irc
respectively) exist. The format for these files is
the same - they may contain an arbitrary amount of text, which will be sent
almost unmodified to the client.
The only modification made to the text is the replacement of all occurances
of $N$
with the current nickname of the client.
The format of the text file is therefore dictated by the IRC standard. Examples:
:nick!user@host PRIVMSG $N$ :the IRC proxy is going down for maintanence now!
:user@hostname 999 * :this is a fake server message
Care should be taken not to send too much data to the user at once, since many users run client extensions (scripts) which will detect and suppress anything looking like a flood.
When sending messages like this, it is polite to actually be online under the nickname you used in the broadcast, so your users can respond to the message.
The file /etc/motd.irc
will be sent to the user immediately after
the "message of the day" from the remote IRC server has completed. The
/tmp/ircbroadcast
file will be sent whenever the Tircproxy process
receives the 'hangup' signal (SIGHUP).