# IRCNow

## Of the Users, By the Users, For the Users

I first became aware of IRCNow through a talk Aaron Lin (jrmu) gave
during Libreplanet 2022[1]. 

I was enticed by both the will to create an open user run network and
also the opportunity to learn more about OpenBSD. At the time I was 
in the process of looking for another VPS provider and considering
moving to openbsd.amsterdam. It appeared to be a great match for me.


## Joining the team 

To cut a long story short I joined their IRC network and introduced
myself to jrmu. We talked for a while and he set up a VPS for me to
do their minutemin training programme. It took me a while as I had
other things going on in the background but eventually I completed
the majority of the training and teams were asked if they wanted
someone to join their team. I ended up being invited to join team
nastycode[2].


## The network

There are 13 servers that should have a team assigned to each. Why
13 you may ask? It was a little while before I learned that it was
because there were 13 founding states of the USA... 

Having 13 servers is actually a bit of a hindrance both technically,
as you obviously need enough staff to man them, and financially. My
objections to this have thus far fell upon deaf ears and partly due
to lack of human resources we have issues with something or other
on an almost daily basis.

The servers are a federation, each team has control of their own
server, runs their own choice of services and the only thing that 
really joins us all together is IRC. I get along with most of the
other admins but seem to have gained the AKA of IronJ for my spirited
arguments with the ones I don't.


## Team server (nastycode.com)

When I joined, the disk usage of the server I am now sysadmin of was
105% on /home and 90% on /var. I didn't actually know it was
possible to go beyond 100%. The disk was so full I couldn't actually
delete large files and had to whittle away at things that looked safe 
to delete until the machine started to respond more normally. 

I found a lot of problems: expired SSL certificates, wrong
permissions on directories that were part of the mail systems
filesystem, backups in peoples home directories, which were also
backed up when /home was backed up. Frankly it was a mess and not
what I'd signed up for. 

I expected to be a junior and have someone to help and guide me with
looking after the server but as it turned out I was pretty much left
to my own devices for 2 days before another sysadmin appeared. 

To be fair though jrmu has been really good in helping out when I've
needed assistance and between us we got most of the critical
outstanding issues resolved pretty quickly.


## Progress

I've ironed out a lot of the niggles on the server. A lot of the
routine stuff is now automated to keep log file sizes sensible and
certificates updated.

Things have gotten better this past week. We have a new team member,
gtlsgamr. He is admin of tildevarsh.in[3], a pubnix system in India.
He was initially coerced by jrmu into helping out with creating a new
wiki for IRCNow but he seemed keen to join a team. Based on the work
I'd seen him do up to that point, I was more than happy to have him
join ours.

We had already talked quite a bit when discussing the wiki so he was
aware of my stance on minimal software and complexity. This has
resulted in us building our own team wiki and website more in line
with our own philosophy; a git repository of markdown files and a
static site generator (mkdocs[4]).


## Join us!

There's never a dull moment over at IRCNow.org, if you're an admin
anyway... Come and join us to chat[5] or maybe even do the Minutemin
Bootcamp[6] training; learn how to admin OpenBSD and join one of the
teams!


[1](https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/ircnow-of-the-users-by-the-users-for-the-users/)
[2](https://nastycode.com)
[3](https://tildevarsh.in)
[4](https://www.mkdocs.org)
[5](ircs://irc.nastycode.com:6697)
[6](https://wiki.ircnow.org/index.php?n=Minutemin.Bootcamp)