This is a brief overview...

net_map is a Perl script that uses the gviz toolkit (specifically dot and
neato) to create IRC network graphs.  It was originally written by
Joshua Schachter, then modified by Kevin Lenzo <lenzo@cs.cmu.edu>.

It's been hacked on and modified for quite some time, and is ready for
a complete rewrite.  It is not ready for prime time, but just "works
for me"

It has been tested on FreeBSD, with dot and neato from gviz 1.5.
It has been tested (and worked) against Hybrid and Elite
It has been tested (and not worked) against IRCnet 2.10

Other people have gotten it running before on various Linux and BSD
systems (note that new (1.7+) versions of gviz require X libraries),
against various IRC servers (mostly Hybrid and comstud).

To configure, edit a copy of sample.cfg, run net_map <your cfg file>
and see if the HTML and GIF files (PNG in disguise in newer versions?)
have been created properly.  Then once it's verified, you can put a
cron entry like this example from my server into your crontab.  Please
do not run the mapper as root.

19,49 * * * * cd /home/wcampbel/monkie && perl net_map wfnet.cfg

This example runs every 30 minutes.

Note that once in a while, a dot or neato process will "run away" and
consume as much idle CPU as it can.  Please keep a watch on those runaway
processes.  This seems to be an issue with gviz, and not with the
mapper script.

Additional:  You need a Times New Roman TrueType font in the same directory
or symlinked in the same directory as the mapper script to run this.
A Windows times.ttf is sitting in the directory if you do not have one.
I believe that it is part of the "Core Web Fonts" that is free to download.
If you have a doubt, please use one included with a legal copy of Windows.

-W. Campbell (Hwy101)