What is Sualtam?
Sualtam is an IRC channel archive generator. You give him the name of a channel, and it automagically creates archives of the discussions that take place on that channel. Here is an example archive.
What is Sualtam not?
Sualtam is not a log parser, like most other IRC archive generators. It is a "bot". That is, it will connect to the channel, record everything that happens, and produce nice html pages that contain the archive. This approach has several advantages over log parsers:
- It is easy to record 24/24. Just start Sualtam on a machine connected to the net. With a log parser, you would only have archives of the time your irc client was running.
- Configuration is trivial. You could probably manage to get an irc client permanently connected, and a log parser to run in the background. But that would be much more work, since neither are designed for that purpose. On the other hand, Sualtam is the irc client. So it is very easy to configure, and it can generate the archive in realtime.
- Sualtam appears as a user on the channel, by default with the name log. So the other users are aware that the conversation is being recorded. No eavesdropping.
Sualtam is not a full featured (did somebody say: bloated?) IRC bot. It will not take care of controling the channel. It will not say anything funny or clever in the channel. Actually, it will not say anything at all. It will just listen.
Sualtam does not generate usage statistics about the channel. But maybe it will in the future.
How do I use Sualtam?
- Download it.
- Create a directory to hold the logs.
- Start it:
java -jar sualtam.jar --channel foo --server irc.bar.net &
One HTML file will be created for each day which had activity on the channel. You can customize the appearance of the logs by putting a file named sualtam.css in the same directory. You can use the example style sheet as a starting point.
- You may also generate a index.html as overview for all
logfiles. Therefore you need the flag
--genIDX. Sualtam will then (re)generate the index.html when it is needed. - If you want to force (re)generation of the index.html
use:
java -jar sualtam.jar --createIDX(process will exit right after generation).
- There is now also a timezone option that let you choose which timezone to use in the logs.
- Run
java -jar sualtam.jar --listtzto see which timezones are available at your installation. - At sualtam startup use the option
--timezone "Australia/Brisbane"to choose which timezone to use.
Try java -jar sualtam.jar --help for the list of all options.
How is it implemented?
Sualtam uses the Martyr framework to understand the IRC protocol.
It is written in the Nice programming language. Nice is a new language that improves on Java.
Sualtam is free software. It is released under the GPL.
Why the funny name?
Ah, you wonder, don't you? :-)
© Daniel Bonniot 2003