Setting up an Eggdrop

The Short Short Version

If you're experienced with the Unix shell environment and don't think you need to read all the stuff on this page, follow this quick guide to installing Eggdrop (otherwise, proceed straight to Getting the Eggdrop Source):

Getting the Eggdrop Source

There are many different versions of Eggdrop available for download from various FTP sites. Three major versions of Eggdrop are currently in use - 1.1.5, the 1.3/1.4 series, the 1.6 series. Other versions include the 0.9 series, 1.0 series, 1.2.0, and Eggdrop2, but these aren't used much any more.

1.1.5, which is now more than three years old, is used by many experienced users who have become comfortable with that version and may have spent much time applying their own modifications to make it work the way they want, and therefore don?t wish to move to a newer version. Some people consider 1.1.5 to be the most stable and least buggy version of Eggdrop, in no small part due to the failure of 1.2 to gain acceptance and many bugs early on in the development of 1.3 series. But later versions of the 1.3 series were more refined and the latter versions of 1.3 and newer series released since are overall better than the ageing 1.1.5.

Until recently, the 1.3/1.4 series was the main version of Eggdrop in use. The last version in the 1.3 series was 1.3.28, before it was renamed and became the 1.4 series as part of a new version numbering system (1.4.0 comes right after 1.3.28). The latest in the 1.4 series is 1.4.5, and is a very stable bot. Some people who prefer the lower memory footprint and simpler configuration of the 1.3/1.4 bots are still using versions in this series. However, development has now almost completely shifted to the 1.6 series and future projects, and any new releases in the 1.4 series will focus on bug fixes rather than new features.

The best version of Eggdrop, for most people, is the current 1.6 series. This was in development for some time (during which it was known as the 1.5 series), so it isn?t completely new and is therefore quite refined and stable. The current version is 1.6.15, and it is the most complete, feature-rich and functional version of Eggdrop. If you?re just starting out with Eggdrop, you should use 1.6.15.

The Eggdrop2 bot (sometimes called the 2.0 series), which is a substantial rewrite of the original Eggdrop, was put into public beta by the old Eggdrop development team quite a while ago, but it is considered to be quite buggy, and the developers eventually abandoned Eggdrop development altogether as users stuck with the 1.3 series, which was continued by a new team. There haven?t been any new public releases of Eggdrop2 for a while now, and most 1.4/1.5/1.6 series versions are actually newer than Eggdrop2.

Download locations

Eggdrop is distributed primarily on FTP servers in tarball format (with the .tar.gz filename extension), with the version number in the filename. The Eggdrop 1.4.5 source, for example, would be named eggdrop1.4.5.tar.gz.

www.egghelp.org?s file area contains the latest versions of Eggdrop, as well as important older releases.

ftp.eggheads.org/pub/eggdrop/ is the official site for the latest releases of Eggdrop 1.3, 1.4 and 1.6.

ftp.eggdrop.net/pub/eggdrop/ is run by the old Eggdrop development team and is a good place to get Eggdrop2 and older versions of Eggdrop.

You can download these directly to your shell using the shell?s FTP client as described here, but I recommend you download Eggdrop to your system (then upload it to the shell) so that you have a local copy of the config file, documentation, etc. to refer to when needed (you can use PowerArchiver to unzip the .tar.gz file on your system). Note that if you download Eggdrop with an old version of Internet Explorer or Netscape, the filename may be corrupted into something like eggdrop1_4_5_tar.tar once it?s downloaded. If that happens, make sure you change it back to eggdrop1.4.5.tar.gz.

Installation

Installing Eggdrop is a relatively simple process provided your shell has the required tools for successful compilation. On most commercial shell accounts which allow Eggdrop bots you won?t have any problems with installation, but on some private boxes or a shell on your ISP you may experience errors during compilation.

Below is a step by step guide to the installation process. These instructions apply to 1.6 bots. It assumes you will be installing eggdrop1.6.15.tar.gz, so just change the numbers if you are installing another version (in the 1.6 series, that is - installation of 1.4 and older versions varies slightly from 1.6).

1) Put the Eggdrop source on your shell using one of the specified download locations, either by downloading the eggdrop1.6.15.tar.gz file to your system then uploading it to the shell via FTP (recommended), or downloading it directly to the shell using the shell?s FTP client. You don?t need to put the .tar.gz file in its own directory (it?ll be done automatically in the next step).

2) Telnet to the shell (if you haven?t already), and type tar zxvf eggdrop1.6.15.tar.gz (if this doesn?t work, try gunzip eggdrop1.6.15.tar.gz then tar xvf eggdrop1.6.15.tar). This will extract the Eggdrop source into its installation directory, named ?eggdrop1.6.15?.

3) Type cd eggdrop1.6.15 to switch to the directory the Eggdrop source was extracted to.

4) Type ./configure (that?s a period followed by a slash followed by the word ?configure?).