IRC via irssi

Haven't blogged for quite a while, been really busy with various things. So, just thought I'd have a little techie post about IRC.

A lot of people have forgotten IRC as a chat facility, but it really is the granddaddy of them all and it is certainly still very popular, especially in the techie world. A lot of techie and developer discussions about subjects as Linux, Firefox, Oracle and the hacker fraternity all meet in IRC, in fact, it's probably fair to say that IRC is the primary communication facility for developers of certainly the first two technologies in that list. There's are many advantages with using IRC as a chat facility and that is its simplicity of basic use, anyone can use it, it doesn't take long to get to grips with the basics. For the advanced user, you can script to your heart's content, or even run your own server for your own purposes (even embedding the technology in your own product, just check out how the chat facility in the python-based MMORPG "Eve Online" works!

There are many IRC client and server software available, whether you like GUIs or command line, the choice is yours. I tend to prefer command-line software for most things, so this blog post will concentrate on my favourite client, irssi using a Lubuntu Linux OS.

So, the first step is to install the client, which as with most things on Debian-based distros, is quite easy :

$ sudo apt-get install irssi

Once the install has completed, you then have to modify your settings. All settings can be done through the command-line UI, and for those commands I will direct you to the irssi documentation. However, all settings are stored in $HOME/.irssi/config and is probably quicker to manually change the file (vim is your friend!). The only thing to point out is to issue a /save command if you do change the settings via the front-end otherwise this file won't be updated.

So, most of the settings can be left as-is, all settings such as default and custom aliases are defined in here. However, the important entries are the hostname, real_name and nick(name). These should be changed to whatever you require.

Once this is done, that's pretty much it. You can then connect to an IRC server by either using the /connect IRC command or via the command-line as :

$ irssi -c irc.undernet.org

Once you are connected, you can then issue any of the IRC commands that you might know, such as /join, /msg, /alias etc. This blog entry will not go into them, a quick Google for "IRC commands" or the irssi documentation will give you plenty of resources.

If you are connected to multiple channels, then you can use ALT- to switch between contexts, i.e. ALT-2 might be #oracle, ALT-3 might be #python etc. You can connect to multiple servers via the /connect command, and then Ctrl-X will switch between connections.

If anyone is interested and wants to chat (about linux/oracle/python), then, I use the nick "tackd" and am generally found on #oracle #linux and/or #python on DALnet, Undernet or EFnet (the major IRC networks really).