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mIRC not responding to CTCP pings properly. #143630 26/02/06 04:08 PM
V Velouria
Velouria V	We have an eggdrop bot on channel, and when I do '!ping', mIRC fails to respond to it. Bug occurrs in 6.16, 6.17 and even 5.91 (!) From a packet dump in Ethereal: PRIVMSG #urban75 :!ping :e911!e911@B1CACD66.59D62548.C9984D92.IP PRIVMSG Test591 :.PING -1481841805. No reply is ever sent by mIRC. Using the JPilot web client, if I do the same ... PRIVMSG #urban75 :!ping :e911!e911@B1CACD66.59D62548.C9984D92.IP PRIVMSG Veltesting :.PING -1481183949. NOTICE e911 :.PING -1481183949. :e911!e911@B1CACD66.59D62548.C9984D92.IP PRIVMSG #urban75 :e911 -> Veltesting -> e911 == 1218 ms The CTCP specifications (such as they are, at http://www.invlogic.com/irc/ctcp.html) say: 4.2 PING <space> <arg> (required) This request is intended to determine the round trip time of a message from the initiator to the recipient and back to the initiator. The precipient is required to return a duplicate of the received argument without modification. Each client will define its own format for the 16 byte argument. Requests with arguments longer than 16 characters should be silently dropped. The reply will be formatted as: <marker> PONG <space> <arg> <marker> Various clients include the ability to run scripts which may choose to receive and reply to this request. At no time should any such script be permitted to filter the request from the client's internal handling, and as such, a client is REQUIRED to produce its own PONG response, subject to flood control. Am I correct in thinking this is a bug in mIRC? mIRC also violates the two parts of this standard which I've put in bold, although the second violation is actually a handy feature rather than a bug imho Edit to add: [16:09] -> [e911] VERSION [16:09] [e911 VERSION reply]: eggdrop v1.6.17 Last edited by Velouria; 26/02/06 05:04 PM.

Re: mIRC not responding to CTCP pings properly. #143631 26/02/06 05:01 PM
Joined: Jan 2003 Posts: 2,125 Q qwerty Hoopy frood
qwerty Hoopy frood Q Joined: Jan 2003 Posts: 2,125	Indeed, mirc doesn't send a reply if the argument doesn't start with a digit. On a sidenote, your link has a typo, the ) is included in the url. Also, the ctcp draft on that page isn't the original draft compiled by Klaus Zeuge and revised by Ben Mesander, assuming that mirc adheres to the latter. It certainly doesn't adhere to the former, as there is no irc client (including mirc) that sends a ctcp PONG reply after receiving a ctcp ping. There also other differences in it. This has nothing to do with the issue you reported, I just think you should've quoted the original draft, as it's the one with most "followers".

Re: mIRC not responding to CTCP pings properly. #143632 26/02/06 05:11 PM
V Velouria
Velouria V	I have edited the link. It was the fault of the forum software ... :tongue: The link I posted is the one that comes up first on a Google search for 'irc ctcp' ... Notwithstanding that, I read the other document, and it says: PING ==== Ping is used to measure the time delay between clients on the IRC network. A ping query is encoded in a privmsg, and has the form: \001PING timestamp\001 where `timestamp' is the current time encoded in any form the querying client finds convienent. The replying client sends back an identical message inside a notice: \001PING timestamp\001 The querying client can then subtract the recieved timestamp from the current time to obtain the delay between clients over the IRC network. Note the section in bold. Neither of the specifications say the timestamp must be a positive integer, which is what mIRC is assuming. It could just as well be 'BLAHBLAH' by either of those standards. It's up to the client how it sends the timestamp, and how it interprets the reply.

Re: mIRC not responding to CTCP pings properly. #143633 26/02/06 05:30 PM
Joined: Jan 2003 Posts: 2,125 Q qwerty Hoopy frood
qwerty Hoopy frood Q Joined: Jan 2003 Posts: 2,125	As mentioned in my previous post, mirc doens't accept only positive integers, it accepts anything that starts with a digit (eg "1sdf-23#$@" is fine). In any case, this is a violation of the draft that mirc (most probably) adheres to in general; what remains to be seen is whether this is intentional.

Re: mIRC not responding to CTCP pings properly. #143634 26/02/06 06:34 PM
V Velouria
Velouria V	Been speaking to the services op and looking into the problem. The reason it is sending a negative timestamp in the first place is due to a limitation of Tcl: Quote: # ping.tcl # Makes the eggdrop PING the requestor and displays the results. # By Pistos - irc.freenode.net#geoshell # Usage: # !ping set ping_min_delay 15000 bind pub - !ping ping bind ctcr - PING ping_received proc ping {nick uhost handle chan arg} { global ping_time ping_channel ping_min_delay set ms [clock clicks -milliseconds] if {[info exists ping_time($nick)]} { if {[expr $ms - $ping_time($nick)] < $ping_min_delay} { putserv "NOTICE $nick :You just requested a ping. Try again later." return } } set ping_time($nick) $ms set ping_channel $chan putserv "PRIVMSG $nick :\001PING $ping_time($nick)\001"; } proc ping_received {nick uhost handle {dest ""} keyword text} { global botnick ping_time ping_channel if {$dest == ""} {set dest $botnick} if {$dest == $botnick} { set ms [clock clicks -milliseconds] set difference [expr $ms - $ping_time($nick)] putserv "PRIVMSG $ping_channel :$botnick -> $nick -> $botnick == $difference ms" } } putlog "ping.tcl loaded" And looking at http://www.tcl.tk/cgi-bin/tct/tip/124.html : Proposed change This TIP proposes two changes to clock clicks to make it more useful in situations where absolute times are needed: 1. Change clock clicks -milliseconds to return a wide integer, representing the number of milliseconds since the Posix epoch. SO the problem stems from a bug in Tcl ... however, mIRC should still honour the requests according to the specifications.

Re: mIRC not responding to CTCP pings properly. #143635 26/02/06 06:48 PM
V Velouria
Velouria V	[18:41] <Velouria> BTW the easiest answer to the !ping problem is: reboot the server [18:41] <Velouria> From the TCL manpage, http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.4/TclCmd/clock.htm#M5 [18:41] <Velouria> clock clicks ?-milliseconds? [18:41] <Velouria> Return a high-resolution time value as a system-dependent integer value. The unit of the value is system-dependent but should be the highest resolution clock available on the system such as a CPU cycle counter. [18:42] <Velouria> Server Up 537 days, 7:30:46 [18:42] <Velouria> - [18:42] <Velouria> Highest connection count: 33 (32 clients) [18:42] <Velouria> - [18:42] <Velouria> End of /STATS report So - have conclusively traced the root of the problem I'm seeing - but imho it's still an mIRC bug.

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