Setting Up Irssi

Irssi is command line client for IRC. It been developed since 1999 and written in C. It is a very good IRC client for those willing to learn the command line interface, otherwise GUI users should check out Xchat.

After a couple of install problems, I was recommended to connect to the Gentoo channel on freenode to get help. I’ve used mIRC in Windows before, and I had a brief foray with Xchat. While Yahoo messenger seemed too basic, Xchat just had too many options. Sometimes GUI apps can just seem clunky to me because they try and over-simplify things. Once I had Xchat set up, I actually liked it but I felt that I wasn’t getting to the heart of IRC. In Windows when I used mIRC BitchX was all the talk, so I thought I’d check out irssi in Linux because I had a few good things about it.

Installing Irssi

Irssi is in portage:

emerge irssi

I’m more of the get my hands dirty, twist, tweak, and learn by example type so I didn’t comb through the pages of documentation. I did read the starters guide though. Irsii installs very very raw, with really nothing set, with this guide the windows and the basics will be created. After doing that start up irssi and set the nickname:

/set nick dirkg3nt1y

Irssi will remember the nickname between sessions, but it won’t be reserved, to do that see “Specific to Freenode” below.

Freenode is a great project. Freenode hosts a good deal of open-source channels for both developing and user-help. To connect to a server:

/connect irc.freenode.net

Now to join the channel:

/j gentoo

Pretty simple, but there are a couple other things that are handy to do like automatically joining freenode when irssi starts. Typing /network will list the pre-configured networks.

If the network isn’t listed, add the network to the list of known networks, since I use freenode alot I also set it to auto-join when irssi starts:

/network add -nick dirkg3nt1y Freenode

/server add -auto -network Freenode irc.freenode.net 6667

Also the channels in networks can be automatically be set to join:

/channel add -auto #gentoo Freenode

It’s not really necessary to read any more documentation unless more advanced functions are needed. Most of the basic commands can be seen with:

/help

And /help command should provide all the information necessary to use it.

Setting up Freenode

The freenode faq is in good working order and can explain in better detail more about what freenode is and what a user can do. I just needed to register my nickname.

Nick registration with freenode:

/msg nickserv REGISTER 

The email for the nick needs to be registered too. It’s a I like to keep my email hidden from other users:

/msg nickserv set hide email on

/msg nickserv set email 

When joining freenode the nick will need to be registered every time. This though too can be done automatically:

/msg nickserv identify YOURPASSWORD

/network add -autosendcmd "/msg nickserv identify password;wait 2000" Freenode

Identd and irssi

Some servers require an identification daemon (identd) to be installed. Linux-identd works nice for me:

emerge linux-identd

Identd can be added as a daemon but it isn’t necessary.

Resources

• Gentoo specific irssi guide
• Another Guide
• Screen and Irssi