Setting Up Irssi
Irssi is a command line cliend for IRC, developed since 1999 and written in the beautiful language of C. It is a very good client with alot of options for those willing to learn a command line interface. If not, check out Xchat.
When I came upon a couple of install problems, I was recommended to connect to the Gentoo freenode channel with irc. I’ve used irc before – really got into mIRC in Windows, had a brief toke of Xchat. I think irc’s dope. Xchat to me was just to difficult to set up as I liked and I felt that I was missing something doing it. When I used mIRC, BitchX was all the talk. Now irssi is and I’m not leaving it.
Installing Irssi
Install irssi however you distro tells you to, for Gentoo:
emerge irssi
I’m more of a get my hands dirty, twist, tweak, learn by example type so I didn’t comb through all the pages of documentation but this guide should be enough to give you a basic setup. If you’re like me, the minimum you should do is comb through the starter’s guide and get feel of it. Irssi installs very very raw with really nothing set up so be sure to add the few tweaks they recommend. After you do that fire up irssi and set your Nick:
/set nick SuperMole
Yes thats my nick, you see me use it from time to time. Irssi saves the name between sessions, but it won’t be reserved. We’ll do that in a second.
Freenode is a great project that hosts alot of open source channels, including Gentoos help channel. If you ever run across them be sure to thank them, they do a great deed. To connect to a server:
/connect irc.freenode.net
And join the channel:
/j gentoo
Irissi is actually pretty easy. Another thing you might like do is automatically joining a network when irssi starts. Typing /network show the pre-configured networks. If your irssi is set up like mine, Freenode isn’t one of the default servers built in. If it’s not, add it to make connecting quicker in the future:
/server add -auto -network Freenode irc.freenode.net 6667
The -auto command is optional. If you choose to use it, it will automatically connect you to that server when irssi starts. You can also associate nicks with a network:
/network add -nick SuperMole Freenode
And channels in networks can be automatically set to joined:
/channel add -auto #gentoo Freenode
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 (this also reserves) my nickname:
/msg nickserv register <password> <email>
You’ll need to respond to their email or your registration will be dropped.
To keep your nick’s email hidden:
/msg nickserv set hidemail on
When starting freenode, you’ll need to login to Freenode so your nick is official. This though too can be done automatically:
/msg nickserv identify <password>
/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, for example linux-identd
emerge linux-identd
Basic Commands
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
The /help command should provide all the information necessary to use it. The only commands I use are /j, /leave, /msg user, /away , /away(returns), and /quit.
And the key commands you might need are: alt+1, alt+2,… to switch between windows; and PageUp to PageDown to scroll up and down.
Tips and Tricks
If you’re in rooms with alot of people, seeing all the joins, parts, quits, afks can be distracting. You can turn them off with:
/ignore ##channelname ALL -PUBLIC -ACTIONS
Or you can ignore them in all channels by using * instead of ##channelname.
Got a troll or someone who’s just having too much fun? You can ignore them for a specific amount of time:
/ignore -time 3600 <nick>
to ignore them for an hour.
Lee said,
June 14, 2008 at 5:08 am
Thanks for this nice concise guide, I’ll definitely be using it!
rainct said,
February 14, 2009 at 4:37 am
>> alt+p and alt+n to scroll up and down.
I’ve just tried this out and found it a bit cumbersome. PgUp and PgDown work way better, perhaps you should try them out if you didn’t know them.
Dirk Gently said,
February 14, 2009 at 8:59 pm
huh! lot of tricks. good to know… though i like to use alt-n… because it’s easier to track.