Install ZNC on Linux Mint

ZNC is an IRC bouncer that acts as a proxy between IRC clients and servers. In this tutorial, we will go through the steps to install ZNC on Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, we need to make sure that the following dependencies are installed:

  • build-essential
  • libssl-dev
  • libperl-dev
  • pkg-config

To install them, run the following command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y build-essential libssl-dev libperl-dev pkg-config

Installing ZNC

The easiest way to install ZNC is through the package manager. However, the version available in the repositories may not be the latest. To install the latest version of ZNC, we need to compile it from source.

  1. Download the latest stable release of ZNC from https://znc.in/releases/ and extract the archive.
wget https://znc.in/releases/archive/znc-1.8.2.tar.gz
tar -xf znc-1.8.2.tar.gz
cd znc-1.8.2
  1. Configure the build by running ./configure.
./configure --enable-ssl --enable-perl

The --enable-ssl flag enables SSL support, while the --enable-perl flag enables Perl support.

  1. Build the binaries by running make.
make
  1. Install ZNC by running sudo make install.
sudo make install

Configuring ZNC

  1. Create a new user for ZNC by running the following command:
sudo useradd --system --create-home znc-user
  1. Switch to the ZNC user by running the following command:
sudo su - znc-user
  1. Initialize the ZNC configuration by running znc --makeconf.
znc --makeconf

Follow the prompts to configure your ZNC installation.

  1. Start ZNC by running znc.
znc

You can now connect to ZNC using any IRC client of your choice. The default IRC port for ZNC is 16667.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we covered the steps to install ZNC on Linux Mint. You should now have a fully functional IRC bouncer running on your system.