ignitionServer should have come bundled with an installer. This installer runs on Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, and 2003, and all included utilities should work on both Windows NT (NT/2000/XP/2003) and Windows 9x (95/98/Me) with the latest patches and service packs applied (however, there are known issues with some configurations of Windows XP Service Pack 2 -- please see the related FAQ entries later in the documentation). Running ignitionServer on Windows 9x is strongly discouraged!

ignitionServer may run under UNIX/Linux with Wine or CrossOver Office, but we have not been successful in making it run (then again, we tried with ttydrv -- it might work with x11drv and the proper DLLs). If you need ignitionServer to run on this platform, you can either wait for ignitionServer NG, or you can see if you can get CodeWeavers (makers of CrossOver Office) to include support for ignitionServer in CrossOver (they charge for special requests like this, but generally speaking, they can make almost everything work). We can try to help you if you attempt to make ignitionServer run on UNIX/Linux, but our support will be very limited; we have other issues to attend to.

After installing ignitionServer, you will need to configure it. To do this, browse to where you installed ignitionServer and open ircx.conf in Notepad. ircx.conf is very well documented using comments (lines beginning with # -- these are IGNORED!). Please take the time to read all of the comments in this file, and you will know what to fill in the normal lines.

You will most likely also want to edit your MOTD (Message of the Day). This file has no special format and is named ircx.motd in the same directory as ircx.conf. Keep in mind that some IRC clients are limited to 80 characters per line, and adding more will either trim the line or make it wrap to the next line. Do not include the standard "-" that appears at the beginning of the MOTD, the server adds this automatically to ensure full compatibility with IRC clients that expect MOTD content to begin with a "-".

X:DIE

By default, the server has the special X:DIE line set to true (1). This WILL keep the server from starting, and it will make it throw errors like "Server Misconfigured". This is not a bug, it's fully intended! The reason we added this feature was to make sure that every ignitionServer user configures their server, and at the very least, changes the default passwords from "admin" to something else. Please make fully certain that you change the passwords before you start the server. To turn the "Server Misconfigured" message off, simply set X:DIE to false (0). If the server was already running when you changed this value, you may need to restart it. Under most cases, the "Restart" button in the ignitionServer Monitor should work, but if it does not, press Ctrl-Alt-Del on your keyboard and end the process named "ignitionServer.exe". Some versions of Windows may show a shortened version of this (in particular, Windows 2000 sometimes truncates it to "ignitionServer.").