Installing Limnoria on GNU/Linux and UNIX (FreeBSD, macOS, …)

This is the “easy to follow” guide to installing Limnoria.

This guide is for non-Windows operating systems. If you want to install on Windows, check out the Windows install guide.

Install

Install using your OS’ package manager

  • Debian or Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install limnoria

    Note that stable / LTS releases may not have the latest features or bug fixes for Limnoria. If you want a newer version than what’s in the default repositories, you can enable Backports on Debian or Unit 193’s PPA on Ubuntu.

  • Fedora: sudo dnf install limnoria

  • CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux: you have to first add the right EPEL repository for your CentOS/RHEL version before being able to install the package on CentOS / RHEL. Once you have, you can run the following command to install Limnoria: sudo yum install limnoria

  • Arch Linux: You can install Limnoria from the AUR, using either limnoria (stable releases) or limnoria-git (git snapshots).

  • Gentoo: sudo emerge net-irc/limnoria

  • Guix and GuixSD: guix package --install limnoria

If any of the methods above works for you, skip the next section and go to Configuration.

Other operating systems (manual install)

If you followed the section above, skip this one.

Dependencies

We require at least Python 3.9, and recommend using the latest Python stable release available for your OS.

You may also install chardet and feedparser, which are used by Limnoria if they are available.

Install Python

Python will usually come by installed by default in your distribution. If not, grab the appropriate packages from the distribution’s repository, or download it from https://python.org.

Install Limnoria

In the next section of this guide we will use pip, which is a generic way of installing Python software.

Global installation (with root access)

If you do not have root access, skip this section.

If you are logged in as root, you can remove sudo from the install commands.

First, install Limnoria’s optional dependencies (you can skip this step, but some features won’t be available):

sudo python3 -m pip install -r https://raw.githubusercontent.com/progval/Limnoria/master/requirements.txt --upgrade

Then Limnoria itself:

sudo python3 -m pip install limnoria --upgrade

If you have an error saying No module named pip, install pip using your package manager (the package is usually named python3-pip).

If you have an error about externally-managed-environment, you need to setup a virtualenv first, then re-run the commands above:

python3 -m venv /opt/venvs/limnoria  # creates a virtualenv at the given path
. /opt/venvs/limnoria/bin/activate   # enables the virtualenv in the current shell
Local installation (without root access)

If you have followed the previous section, skip this one.

First we install requirements (you can skip it, but some features won’t be available) and then Limnoria itself.:

python3 -m pip install -r https://raw.githubusercontent.com/progval/Limnoria/master/requirements.txt --upgrade
python3 -m pip install limnoria --upgrade

You might need to add $HOME/.local/bin to your PATH.:

echo 'PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.$(echo $SHELL|cut -d/ -f3)rc
source ~/.$(echo $SHELL|cut -d/ -f3)rc

If you have an error saying No module named pip, install pip using this guide: https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installing/

If you have an error about externally-managed-environment, you need to setup a virtualenv first, then re-run the commands above:

python3 -m venv ~/.venvs/limnoria  # creates a virtualenv at the given path
. ~/.venvs/limnoria/bin/activate   # enables the virtualenv in the current shell

Configuration

Note

For historical reasons, commands are called supybot; but they actually run Limnoria.

We are now ready to configure Limnoria. Limnoria creates quite a few auxiliary files/directories to store its runtime data. It is thus recommended to create an empty directory from which you’ll be running Limnoria, to keep all the data in a nice dedicated location. For example, you may create a ‘runbot’ directory inside your home directory.

Now you can cd to your ‘runbot’ directory, and from within it run supybot-wizard, which will walk you through a series of questions to generate the bot config file.

One thing to make sure to do in the wizard, to make your life easier down the line, is to select y for the Would you like to add an owner user for your bot? question, and actually create the owner user. Remember that password, so that you can later ‘’identify’’ with the bot on IRC and administer it.

Once you generate the config file, which will be named yourbotnick.conf (where “yourbotnick” is the nick you have chosen for your bot in the wizard), it will be placed in your ‘runbot’ directory. (As long as you leave the default answer to the ‘’Where would you like to create these directories?’’ question.)

Now to start the bot, run, still from within the ‘runbot’ directory:

supybot yourbotnick.conf

And watch the magic!

For a tutorial on using and managing the bot from here on, see the Getting Started guide.