Setting Up Irssi

From Debuntu

This page will describe how to set up Irssi to get the most out of it. this documentation is based on Irssi version 0.8.12

Navigation withing Irssi will be covered in Irssi_Navigation

Contents 1 Changing settings 2 Managing Networks 2.1 Listing Networks 2.2 Adding Networks 2.3 Removing Networks 3 Managing Servers 3.1 Listing the servers 3.2 Adding a new server entry 3.3 Modifying a server entry 3.4 Deleting a server entry 4 Managing Channels 4.1 Listing Channels 4.2 Adding Channels 4.3 Deleting a Channel

Changing settings

Settings are stored in ~/.irssi/config . There is 2 ways to modify your settings:

1. Manually editing ~/.irssi/config
2. Using Irssi commands during a session, and finally saving them with the /save command

This wiki page will be focused on using the command method.

So, to get started, you need to have Irssi installed on your system and start a session by typing:

$ irssi

at a command prompt. Optionaly, if you want to directly connect to a specific server, you can use:

$ irssi -c irc.example.com [-p port] [-n nickname]

Managing Networks

A network may be composed of many servers, for instance, Freenode, Undernet networks .... have more than one server where users can log in. Networks can be created, deleted, viewed. Also, each networks might have different rules, behaviour, so you can set different parameters depending on which network you connect.

Listing Networks

To list the networks already registered in Irssi, you need to type:

/network list

this will list the networks in window 1.

Adding Networks

Adding a new network is done with the command:

/network add

So, to add network MyNet, we can use:

/network add MyNet

On top of this with can pass a custom nickname using the -nick switch, also, one can send a custom command when connection to the network by using -autosendcmd. Now, imagine you want to set a specific nickname, mynick, for this network and want to identify yourself to NickServ using password mypass, the following command can be used:

/network add -nick mynick -autosendcmd "/msg NickServ identify mypass" MyNet

So, next time you connect to this network, you will be automatically registered.

Removing Networks

To remove a network, the remove parameter is used. So removinf MyNet is done as follow:

/network remove MyNet

Managing Servers

By default, Irssi comes with a default server list. You might weant to manipulate this list by adding/removing soe entries, viewing the list of servers...

Listing the servers

To see this list, you can trigger the command:

/server list

And output like this:

23:07 Server               Port  Network    Settings
23:07 irc.ubuntu.com       8001  Ubuntu     
23:07 irc.stealth.net      6668  IRCnet     
23:07 irc.efnet.org        6667  EFNet      
23:07 irc.undernet.org     6667  Undernet   
23:07 irc.dal.net          6667  DALnet     
23:07 irc.quakenet.org     6667  QuakeNet 

Will be sent to window #1

Adding a new server entry

To add server entries, one needs to use the command:

/server add

If you want to add a new server, irc.example.com, that belong to network MyNet and is running on standard port, you will use:

/server add -network MyNet irc.example.com

You can verify that it was added by using #Listing the servers.

Now suppose that you want need to connect to a server, secureirc.example.com, that belong to the same network (MyNet) which uses SSL on port 6677 and which require to be given the password ircpass during authentication. You do not wish to authenticate the SSL certificate. And because you like when your application does thing on your behalf, you want to have Irssi to automatically connect to the server at startup.
All this can be told to irssi by triggering the following command:

/server add -auto -ssl -network MyNet secureirc.example.com 6677 ircpass

Now, if you /save, next time you start irssi, irssi will automatically connect to secureirc.example.com.

Modifying a server entry

To modify a server entry, we are going to use /server add command. A server is identified by its address and port number. So suppose that finally you do not want to autoconnect to secureirc.example.com and that on top of this port number is the standard port 6667, you can change the settings with:

/server add -noauto -port 6667 secureirc.example.com 6677

Now, #Listing the servers will show:

...
irc.example.com      6667  MyNet      ssl
secureirc.example.com 6667  MyNet      (pass), ssl

Deleting a server entry

To delete a server entry:

/server remove

command is used. As said earlier, a service is identified by servername and port. So, if you have the same server name in your list with different port opened, you need to make sure that you specify the port. In our example, removing secureirc.example.com would be done with:

/server remove secureirc.example.com

If this service could be access on both port 6667 and 6677, and we wanted to remove the entry for port 6677, we would have had to run:

/server remove secureirc.example.com 6677

Managing Channels

Now that we have Networks and Servers define, it is time to add some channel we want to join. You might have guessed, channels are managed using the:

/channel

command.

Listing Channels

Listing channels known by irssi is done with:

/channel list

Adding Channels

To add a new channel, we need to use:

/channel add

Here again, we can add specific options such as autojoin and command on startup. To autojoin channel mychan on network MyNet when connecting to a network, we will use:

/channel add -auto #mychan MyNet

When using a bot, it is pretty handy to send the bot a command. This is done with:

/channel add -auto -bots "ChanServ" -botcmd "msg $0 op $C" #mychan MyNet

Deleting a Channel

To remove channel mychan from network MyNet, we need to use the following:

/channel remove #mychan MyNet