Services Migration

The time has come for freenode to migrate from our old, legacy services package to a much newer, actively maintained package known as Atheme, developed by the Atheme Project. Although we, with the help of the Atheme developers, have tried to make the migration process as painless as possible, there are still a few interface differences that you will need to be aware of. This guide, prepared by tomaw, will attempt to walk you through the main changes, grouped by service.

NickServ

• NickServ will now require a valid, verified email address to register new nicks. Because of this the registration command has changed to

  /msg NickServ REGISTER

You will the receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to confirm your account registration. Accounts that have been migrated from theia that did not have an email address set will find that their address is set to 'nomail'. These users should set an email address as soon as possible.

• New NickServ accounts that are registered but not confirmed will be automatically dropped after 24 hours.

• What was Nick Linking has now been replaced with Nick Grouping. This means that you have just one account (including one password, one email address etc.) but potentially multiple Nicks associated with that account. For more information please issue the following command:

  /msg NickServ HELP GROUP

Migrated accounts will have the password associated to the master nick, but will have the first valid email address found when searching all linked nicks.

• SET UNFILTERED has been removed and the global block on messages from users that have not identified to NickServ has been removed. This was only ever intended to be a temporary measure to combat spam and we're hopeful that we can deal with those events in different, less intrusive ways. UMODE +E remains an alternative for any users who wish to block such messages.

• SET GSM, PHONE, and the like have been removed and replaced with a SET PROPERTY feature. For more information, see:

  /msg NickServ HELP SET PROPERTY

• INFO will no long return a list of channels where you have access. Instead use:

  /msg NickServ LISTCHANS

• A new SET ENFORCE feature replaces the un-used SET KILL feature. For details, see

  /msg NickServ HELP SET ENFORCE

ChanServ

• Channel access is now controlled by a series of flags, rather than levels. This will allow channel owners and Group Contacts to better control the access they grant users, and to see more clearly what access those users will have. Channel Access now also includes a powerful templating system, making it easier to manage large and complicated access lists. For more information on these features, please see:

  /msg ChanServ HELP FLAGS

  /msg ChanServ HELP TEMPLATE

  /msg ChanServ HELP ACCESS

• Channel access can now be manipulated using two different commands.

  /msg ChanServ ACCESS #channel

behaves similarly to our previous services, but the standard Atheme command is to use

/msg ChanServ FLAGS

Note that viewing FLAGS requires you to have flag +A on the channel in question, but ACCESS does not. This can be useful if you're trying to locate channel operators.

• ChanServ can no longer be used to OP or VOICE multiple users, though it is still possibly to OP/VOICE individual users:

  /msg ChanServ OP #channel nick

• A new RECOVER command is now available, which can be used by the founder to regain control of a channel which has been "taken over".

• Channel passwords are no longer used for registration as all channel access is control by the access flags.

• LIST pattern has been replaced by a new service called ALIS. See below for details.

ALIS

• ALIS provides a more useful channel list facility than what was previously available. It will list matching channels, but will filter out channels that are not currently in use. Its use is similar to the functionality that was previously built into ChanServ:

  /msg ALIS LIST #freenode-*

MemoServ

• Memos can now be replied to and forwarded to other users

• Optional email forwarding to your registered email address. To enable this feature, issue the following command:

  /msg NickServ SET EMAILMEMOS ON

Hopefully that covers most of the differences that you will come across during day to day life on freenode. Of course, if you have any questions, suggestions or comments, please feel free to drop by #freenode, email support (at) freenode (dot) net or message a member of staff.