Eggdrop Installation

05 April 2010

Crontab

Most people keep asking me why my bots are not coming to my channel anymore after your server has been restarted. In this case, you need crontab to make your job easier. With a crontab, you don't have to login to the server over and over again to start your eggdrop bot. Crontab will help you to check your eggdrop bot every minute. Moreover, Eggdrop has become more stable with time, thanks mostly to people reporting bug details and helping find places where it crashes.However, there are still a -few- places where things aren't perfect. Few if any things in life are. Also, most systems go down from time to time. These things cause your bot to disappear from IRC, and you have to restart it. The eggdrop source file includes a csh script called 'botchk' that will help keep the bot online. It will make the machine check every ten minutes as to if your bot is still running. To use it, you have to add a line to your crontab.

First, edit 'botchk' and change the directory and command line parameters so that it will be able to start up your bot. Then, add this line to your crontab:

0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /home/mydir/botchk

If you don't want to get emails from cron, put this:

0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /home/mydir/botchk >/dev/null 2>&1

Naturally, you need to change the path to the correct path for botchk. If you've never used crontab before, here is a simple way to add that line: Create a new file called 'mycron' and put the above line into it. Then, from your shell prompt, type crontab mycron That will create a new crontab entry for you, with a line that runs botchk every ten minutes. Botchk will then restart the bot when necessary (and send you email informing you - if setup).

The simple and easy step to install eggdrop is using autobotchk.

Use autobotchk to install crontab on your shell:
Type: autobotchk --prefix=/www0/login/eggdrop -nE --time=15 eggdrop.conf

You need to find your eggdrop path.
1) change directory to your eggdrop directory.
For example: cd eggdrop
2) type: pwd
The pwd command will tell you the eggdrop path
and then enter the eggdrop path --prefix=/www0/login/eggdrop

Contact support@risingnet.net if you are having problem installing crontab.