Cross-compile and setup ZNC for Ubuntu 14.04

Cross compile across incompatible architectures

Why are you writing this article?

• I have a small VPS box that didn’t have the memory to compile ZNC with Python/Perl/TCL support even without the ‘-pipe’ CFLAG.
• As a reminder to myself on cross compiling

Overview

• We’ll have a “Compile” and “Destination” machines (or virts, depending on your capabilities)
• Compile box best be discardable VM with a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04, with more than 1GB of ram. I’m not sure how much more ram, but 1GB won’t cut it.
• We won’t be creating a package. This is an old school compile and .tar copy-install. Just a heads up if you don’t like this sort of thing
• Due to point above, compile prefix will be /opt/znc. I like a higher-degree of separation, which is why I use “/opt/znc” instead of just “/opt”.
• After compiling, we’ll create a separate user for ZNC and an upstart file to have ZNC run as a service via non-privileged user.

Compile box

Assuming that this is a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04 (server), run the following commands.

I recommend you do them 1-by-1 for maximum control.

# Note on "build-dep znc" - manually installing libraries might get us newer 
# dep-library versions, but I'm lazy.
# swig3.0 is a buld requirement, not needed on the destination box.
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:teward/swig3.0
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade
sudo apt-get -y install build-essential autoconf automake git swig3.0 libicu-dev
sudo apt-get -y build-dep znc

# Also check: http://wiki.znc.in/Installation#Other_Build_Dependencies
# ^ just in case.

# Optional:
sudo reboot

# Workspace preparation:
mkdir ~/git
cd ~/git

# Let's get the project and cd into it
git clone https://github.com/znc/znc.git
cd znc

# Check out the 1.6.3 tag or whichever you like. To list:
# git tag -l 
# Note: this guide was written for 1.6.3 tag (version)

git checkout tags/znc-1.6.3

# This is a project requirement
./autogen.sh

# Configure with tcl,perl,python
./configure \
    --enable-python=python3 \
    --enable-tcl \
    --enable-perl \
    --prefix=/opt/znc 

# Another project requirement
git submodule update --init --recursive

# DO THIS ON THE DESTINATION BOX TO GET THE ARCH!
# If gcc is not on the destination box, install build-essential, 
# and then remove it after running the command
# Note that the 3 lines below are 1 command!
gcc -march=native -E -v - </dev/null 2>&1 |
    grep cc1 |
    perl -pe 's|.*-march=(.*?) .*|\1|g'

# Back to Compile box. Remember to replace "REPLACEME" with your arch!
CFLAGS="-march=REPLACEME -O2 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="$CFLAGS"

# -jx = number of cores +1. I had 8 cores = -j9
make -j9

# This will install to prefix /opt/znc/{bin,..}
sudo make install

# Let's create the tarball!
tar -czf ~/znc.tar.gz /opt/znc

Intermezzo

Copy the tar “znc.tar.gz” from the Compile box to the Destination box

Destination box

# Prepare the box for installation of znc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade
sudo apt-get install -y libperl5.18 libpython3.4 libtcl8.5 tcl8.5 libicu52

# Optional
sudo reboot

# Let's extract to the same dir structure as on Compile
sudo tar -xf znc.tar.gz  -C /

# Create dedicated user "zncuser"
sudo useradd -c "ZNC bouncer user" -ms /bin/false zncuser

# Initial znc configuration as "zncuser"
# At the last prompt, don't select to start now. 
# We'll do it via upstart in a second
HOME=/home/zncuser sudo -u zncuser /opt/znc/bin/znc --makeconf

Set up the upstart script

/etc/init/zncbnc.conf

# znc

description "IRC Bouncer"

start on (runlevel [2345] and net-device-up)

stop on runlevel [016]

respawn
respawn limit 10 5
setuid zncuser

script
  exec /opt/znc/bin/znc -fn
end script

Final words

You can now start your bouncer via:

sudo start zncbnc

It will also get started automatically with system reboot which you can test.

ZNC documentation is quite extensive, so I won’t dive deep into configuring it. Have fun!