Configuring a Private chat between users

Any two users on the ircd server can establish a fully encrypted communication medium between each other using a basic keypair setup.

Configuring ircd_config.toml

ircd_config.toml should be created by default in ~/.config/darkfi/ when you first run ircd.

Generate a keypair using the following command:

% ircd --gen-keypair

This will generate a Public Key and a Private Key.

Save the Private key safely & add it to the ircd_config.toml file as shown below.

[private_key.”your_private_key_goes_here”]

To share your Public Key with a user over ircd you can use one of the public channels or via an external app like Signal, as plaintext DMs are disabled in ircd.

Note: If you use the ircd's public channel, your message will be publically visible on the IRC chat.

See the example ircd_config.toml for more details

Example

Lets start by configuring our contacts list in the generated ircd_config.toml file (you can also refer to the examples written in the comments of the toml file), let's assume alice and bob want to privately chat after they have each other's public keys:

Alice would add bob to her contact list in her own config file:

[contact.”bob”]
contact_pubkey = “D6UzKA6qCG5Mep16i6pJYkUCQcnp46E1jPBsUhyJiXhb”

And Bob would do the same:

[contact.”alice”]
contact_pubkey = “9sfMEVLphJ4dTX3SEvm6NBhTbWDqfsxu7R2bo88CtV8g”

Lets see an Example where 'alice' sends “Hi” message to 'bob' using the /msg command

 /msg bob Hi

Note for Weechat Client Users:
When you private message someone as shown above, the buffer will not pop in weechat client until you receive a reply from that person.

For example here 'alice' will not see any new buffer on her irc interface for the recent message which she just send to 'bob' until 'bob' replies, but 'bob' will get a buffer shown on his irc client with the message 'Hi'.

Reply from 'bob' to 'alice'

/msg alice welcome!

Or instead of /msg command, you can use:

/query bob hello

This works exactly the same as /msg except it will open a new buffer with Bob in your client regardless.

Note: The contact name is not the irc nickname, it can be anything you want, and you should use it when DMing.

Note: It's always a good idea to save your keys somewhere safe, but in case you lost your Public Key and you still have your Private key in ircd_config.toml file, you recover the Public Key like so:

% ircd --recover-pubkey {your_private_key}