def init(confdir="/etc/cslbot"):
    """The bot's main entry point.

    | Initialize the bot and start processing messages.

    """
    multiprocessing.set_start_method('spawn')

    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
    parser.add_argument('-d', '--debug', help='Enable debug logging.', action='store_true')
    parser.add_argument('--validate', help='Initialize the db and perform other sanity checks.', action='store_true')
    args = parser.parse_args()
    loglevel = logging.DEBUG if args.debug else logging.INFO
    logging.basicConfig(level=loglevel, format="%(asctime)s %(levelname)s:%(module)s:%(message)s")
    # We don't need a bunch of output from the requests module.
    logging.getLogger("requests").setLevel(logging.WARNING)

    cslbot = IrcBot(confdir)

    if args.validate:
        cslbot.shutdown_mp()
        print("Everything is ready to go!")
        return

    try:
        cslbot.start()
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        # KeyboardInterrupt means someone tried to ^C, so shut down the bot
        cslbot.disconnect('Bot received a Ctrl-C')
        cslbot.shutdown_mp()
        sys.exit(0)
    except Exception as ex:
        cslbot.shutdown_mp(False)
        logging.error("The bot died! %s", ex)
        output = "".join(traceback.format_exc()).strip()
        for line in output.split('\n'):
            logging.error(line)
        sys.exit(1)