Homebrew IRC server for Wii?

[jeremy1988]

I've looked around for homebrew software related to this, but so far I've only seen IRC clients for the Wii, nothing that would allow me to host an IRC server.

I know there are FTP server apps for the Wii, so I would think a small IRC server would also be possible. It's a very old protocol and doesn't take a lot of resources for basic functionality.

Is there anything out there that would allow me to do this?

 

[daxtsu]

You could probably run one on Wii Linux. But no, I don't personally know of an IOS-based homebrew that offers such functionality, which is understandable, given the very limited audience.

 

[jeremy1988]

I was afraid I would get a response like that.

I've tried before to install Linux on my Wii, and it's a REAL pain. I had to go through this annoying application called BootMii, and in the end the only kernel I could get working didn't even support Wi-Fi. The "good" kernel (MIKE p5 or something) has to be installed manually, and I swear it has never worked for me. Even if I pick the right video option, etc. It doesn't help that all the documentation is outdated and cobbled together in a confusing way.

I'm not exactly a novice with Linux, I've used it on the Desktop before. But installing it on the Wii is a ridiculous process, and I'm not even sure it will work right because I have a red Wii from 2010. I've heard that the newer Wiis can't run MINI or something, so Wii Linux can't use Wi-Fi on them. That made me give up on Linux a while back. The Homebrew Channel works pretty well by itself for loading ordinary homebrew apps.

I started trying to install Linux again after making this post, and honestly I think if I have to use Wii Linux, I'll get frustrated and give up again. To be blunt, it's an absolutely horrible port of Linux, and I think the developers of it were the sloppiest people on earth.

 

[daxtsu]

Yeah, it's not exactly friendly to use, but it is one solution, even if it's not desirable. A port of an existing IRC server to libogc/IOS would probably be the ideal solution, but it's probably not likely to happen; the Wii scene seems to be pretty small these days, and the programs still left in active development are mostly USB GC/Wii game loaders, or HBC replacements/substitutes, or other misc. utilities like Syscheck. Out of curiosity, would something small like a Raspberry Pi not suit your needs better?

 

[jeremy1988]

Yeah, I really should try to get Linux working on the Wii at some point, if I can ever figure it out. It would open up a lot of options. The one thing that sucks about the Wi-Fi not working is that I have to have both a USB storage device and a USB keyboard hooked up to use Linux, so I can't use the Wii LAN Adapter to get around the issue.

I'm in Computer Science classes right now, and once I manage to learn enough about programming, I may very well try to port something like that. I'm still a few years away from being able to do that, though. I've always wished I could write programs, but I just struggle so much with Math that I doubted I could ever write programs. I've heard you need to be pretty good at Math to be a programmer.

I do think a Raspberry Pi would probably be better for my purposes, but I just transferred all of my Wii Shop games onto my Wii U, so I figured now would be a good time to hack it, given that my Wii now serves no special purpose. I have two working Gamecube systems and a brand new Wii U, thus all the normal functionality is duplicated. I don't need it as a Wii at all anymore, and have nothing to lose if I break it.

Still, if I can't figure out a way to get my Wii working for this project, I'll definitely consider getting one of those low-powered ARM computers like you suggested.

 

[migles]

This is semi-offtopic, but what IRC clients are you talking about? I haven't found a way to chat on IRC on the Wii without Wii Linux or the internet channel.

if you read what he talked about, you may understand he wants to make a IRC server, not a client..

 

[jeremy1988]

Well, I haven't gotten Wii Linux to work any better, but I did find a work around.

Apparently I was wrong about it running off the USB storage device. It runs off the SD card, and only needs the USB device while installing. So, I pulled out the USB install media, plugged in my Wii LAN adapter, and managed to use dhclient to configure it as eth0. It worked.

All I had to do at that point was point sources.list at the Debian archives, and install an IRCd. The only one I found seems to limit usernames to 9 characters, which sucks, but I can live with it.

I will reiterate that it's a terrible solution, though. It's acting like my keyboard is a non-US layout, and it's overscanning. The only advice they give is to change out the kernel, which they conveniently don't help you out with at all. Luckily, my TV is a late-model Sony CRT that lets me set it to 16:9 enhanced mode, allowing me to see the bottom lines of the screen, albeit squished up.

Luckily, for my purposes, I can just install an SSH service, use the console from another computer, and deal with this ugly hack as infrequently as possible.

EDIT: I did finally get MIKEp5 to work, and not only did it fix the video scanning issues and keyboard problems, it increased performance significantly. It definitely feels like a computer now.

 

[jeremy1988]

I meant that he mentioned finding many IRC clients but no servers but I couldn't find any clients. Also, based on your profile pic, /)?

Well, I saw one program that I thought might be an IRC client called Wii Chatter, but it's very vague about what it does and I haven't tried it. I also remember there was an alpha program called Ircii being developed a while back, but it seems that nothing ever came of it. I usually use Mibbit when I want an IRC Client on the Wii or Wii U.

It's weird that there aren't many IRC clients for the Wii, though (at least none listed on Wiibrew). They have a Twitter app, an HTTP server, an RSS reader, and an FTP server... but no IRC. It's obviously technically possible, but no one who had the skills ever cared enough to do it.

A standalone IRCd would have been ideal for my purposes, as it would have reduced overhead compared to a Linux kernel and all the daemons running in the background. But still, setting the nice to -20 is probably good enough. PowerPC chips like this are very similar to the ones that were used in IBM servers a couple decades ago, so it should be fine as long as I stay under 20 users and don't add a lot of services. RAM is actually my main concern, the Wii is a little low on it... it only has a bit more RAM than my old K6-2 from 1998. I'm hoping the swap partition I made helps.

Anyway, it's up at wiirc.linkpc.net if anyone wants to see it. I'm doing this more out of boredom than anything else, so it may sit empty most of the time. I mostly just want it there because I used to host a Minecraft server for a lot of my friends, and they got used to BukkitIRCd being there 24/7, even after most of them got bored of Minecraft. I'm keeping it more out of tradition than anything else, I guess.