#Friends-of-irc Channel Classes

Hostmasks and Bans

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This page should not be taken as legal or medical counsel , but only as recommendation from a collection of sources.

This is a class about hostmasks and bans.

This class explains hostmasks and shows you how to form them from /whois information on an IRC user. Any IRC user who holds channel ops in any channel will benefit from this information. This is the hardest of Hostmasks classes. Once you have this skill down, the other are easy.

WHAT IS A MASK?

The IRC servers, Channel Services and your IRC client will not understand certain commands if you don't use a mask. It's just the way we write information about an IRC user and the user's connection. Just as in math we say 2+2=4, a mask is the way we give the information regarding the Internet connection. The information that forms the mask can easily be obtained from doing a /whois on a user. A mask is made up of 4 pieces of information: nick, user, node and host,in the form nick!user@node.host type /whois My NickName Look in your status window and read the information there. Paste the first line of that information here.

Nick

The user chooses his own nick, or nickname on IRC. A user can change nicknames without logging off the IRC network.

What is my nick?

User

(also called username, userid or ident) The user can customize this information as well, but usually you must log off the network for the changes to "take".

The user id is the part right before the @

What is my user id?

Node

(ppp node or connection node) The connection node is generally just a series of letters and numbers. It indicates which port at the ISP you have connected to the Internet through. You can think of the connection node as the modem at your ISP. This node number for most people is different each time they log on to the Internet. This is called a dynamic address.

Every time you connect to the Internet, the ISP assigns whatever node is available. The node is the exact connection route. It is the logical location of the connection.

Although the node is next in the /whois, it is easy to think of it as the leftover information after you get the nick, userid, and host, so we will talk about how to find the node more in a minute.

Host

(domain or site) You can think of the host as your hosting service provider or Internet Service Provider (ISP). The Host information is just the last two parts of the/whois, ending in mindspring.com or sprint.net etc, OR in the case of a country outside of USA it will be the last 3 parts eg mindspring.com.ca (Canada) or mindspring.com.fr (France). These domains end in a two letter country code. Your HOST information generally remains the same every time you log onto the Internet through that provider.

So the host is the whatever.com part or the whatever.co.uk part...do you see the pattern?

What is my host?

And here is the part we skipped:

Node

The connection node is often just a series of letters and numbers, and it indicates exactly which port at the ISP you have connected to the Internet through.

The node, then, is everything after the @ and before the host.

Everything after the @ and before whatever.com or whatever.co.uk...

See the pattern again?

To further complicate matters, Chatworks protects its users by hiding some of the node information (this is a good thing, just confusing for this class.) So here on Chatworks, part or all of the node is replaced with *s so would-be troublemakers can't see it.

What is my node?

These four pieces of information are put together into the form:

nick!user@node.host

(Remember we discussed host before node)

NiteBreez is breezy@ts134-66.advanix.net * NiteBreez

Because the Chatworks network hides some information about your connection, for training purposes, we will use this mask to work on Hostmasks a little more.

From this line of information from the /whois

What is the nick?

What is the user id?

What is the node?

What is the host?

Write the hostmask in the form nick!user@node.host.

This is called a mask. To make a mask you just put an exclamation mark (!) between the nick and the user@node.host

The NODE and HOST combined together are also referred to as the HOSTNAME, so we could also write the mask as:

nick!user@hostname

Example /whois: foimember is friend@12-5a.mindspring.com

What is the nick?

What is the user id?

What is the node?

What is the host?

Let's practice:

Do a /whois on yourself and look at the information in your status window. The information we are concerned with right now is the first line. This line of the /whois gives your nickname and says "is" then has the name you put in your IRC client as your email address alias, followed by @. After the @ you have the ISP you logged in to (either the name of the ISP or your IP address) including the node at the ISP.

When you are comfortable with the parts of the mask, you're ready to move on to commands that use the mask.

Experienced users don't generally do a silence or ban on full mask or nick alone, because a nick can be changed quickly and easily by the command /nick (newnick).

Instead, bans and silences are usually made against parts of the mask that are more inconvenient or time-consuming to change: combinations of user, node and host. The most common host mask for bans is called a U@H mask or "User at Host" mask.

Going back up to our example above

NiteBreez is breezy@ts134-66.advanix.net * NiteBreez

nick!user@node.host

NiteBreez!breezy@ts134-66.advanix.net * NiteBreez

As we said earlier, in this example the user is breezy and the host is advanix.net

This mask is made by replacing the nick and node with a * symbol, and by adding a * symbol in front of the username. Since we don't care what nick we are silencing or banning we replace it with a *. Since we don't care what node is used, we also replace the node with a *.

*!breezy@*.advanix.net

We have to do one more thing to this U@H mask to make it a good one:

Sometimes when a user logs onto IRC their username gets given a "tilde" or ~ symbol in front of it, and sometimes it is not.

Since you never know if that ~ symbol is going to be there or not, put in a wildcard (*) when you use a silence or ban mask on U@H. The * here means the ban or silence will work on the username with or without the ~.

The ~ (tilde) may or not be there so always put a * before the username when silencing or banning.

*!*breezy@*.advanix.net

here is a basic example of a good ban mask

*!*user@*.host

REMOVING BANS OR SILENCES

To remove a /silence Using IRCle, mIRC and pIRCh: Repeat the with a minus sign before the mask. /silence -*!*user@*.host

To remove a ban Using IRCle, mIRC and pIRCh: Repeat the command but with a minus sign before the "b" /mode #channel -b *!*user@*.host

Cyberangels are a wonderful orginization on the web that can help anytime you find yourself in trouble , many thank to them for much of the informatin I will be presenting in these classes.

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