epcim
10/20/2015 - 1:46 PM
irc.howto.md
IRC basics
/connect irc.freenode.net # Connect to a server
/join #gentoo # Join the gentoo channel
/join ##linux # Join the linux channel
/nick foobar # Change your nick to "foobar"
/query foobar # Opens a private message, you type the msg
/wc # close a channel or message window
/part # Nicer way to leave a channel
/disconnect # Disconnect from an IRC server
/exit # Quit IRSSI itself
/ignore foobar # Ignore someone
/ignore foobar MSG # Ignore private messages from someone
/ignore ##gentoo ALL -PUBLIC -ACTIONS # Ignore parts, joins, quits
/rmreconns # Stop trying to reconnect to a server :/
/topic [space][tab] # This autocomplets the topic
/topic # This just prints out the topic
/SET autolog oN # Turn on autologging
/save # Save settings
/q foobarnick # Start a private message
Connect with irssi client:
irssi -c irc.freenode.net
Other doc (no formated)
6. Window management
/win b -- balance
Window management is easy and done with the keyboard.
Alt+# to switch between windows (Alt+1 for Window 1, Alt+2 for Windows 2 etc). Use qwerty for window numbers higher than 10 (and 0 for 10). The modifier key may differ depending on your shell/terminal. If Alt+# does not work, try Esc+# (openbsd).
Alt+left/right move between the channels in a window. This works in KDEs konsole and aterm, but not in xterm.
Alt+up/down moves between the window tabs. This works in KDEs konsole and aterm, but not in xterm.
Use alt+a to change to the next active window (where someone has uttered a word)
To make a new window:
/window new
Use the shortcut:
/win new
You can move the current channel with:
/win m u (/window move up)
/win m d (/window move down)
You can resize a window with:
/win gr 5 (/window grow #)
/win shr 5 (/window shrink #)
Use /win # where # is the window number to jump directly to a window:
/win 11
To close a window:
/win c (/window close)
This actually parts the channel but only closes the window if you have no other channels open in it. So usually it will the same as /part:
/pa (/part)
To get some nice information about the current window, just type:
/win
You can save your window settings so your windows are restored the next time you start irssi:
/layout save
7. Paste the output of programs to a channel
To execute a command in link:irssi, just do:
/exec program
Add -o to paste the output to the current channel:
/exec -o ls /pub/
########################################################################
IRSSI Manual
Irssi 0.8 documentation - http://www.irssi.org/
Copyright(c) 2000 Timo Sirainen <cras@irssi.org>
Index
0. Generic babbling
1. Command line parameters
2. Message levels
3. Flood protection
4. Configuration
5. Servers
6. Channels
7. IRC commands and features
8. Notify list
9. Text highlighting
10. Ignoring
11. Logging
( not written yet: )
12. Aliases
13. Themes
14. Last log (currently text version only)
15. Nick and word completion
16. Recode
17. Windowing system (text version)
18. Keyboard (text version)
19. Perl scripting
0. Generic babbling
0.1 History
Hello. I'm Timo Sirainen aka. cras, and I'm an IRC addict. :)
I'm actually quite new in IRC, I got my first internet connection
sometimes around fall 1997 and I started actively IRCing around
christmas. I used EPIC and BitchX mostly at the start, but soon
found some nice KDE IRC client which name I can't remember anymore.
It's author however stopped developing it after I had been using it
a few months. And since it had bugs and all, I wanted another nice
GUI IRC client. I didn't find any.
Since I've always been a coder and do-it-yourself guy (my own
offline reader and BBS software in the BBS ages), I started my own
IRC client at spring 1998. I called it yagIRC standing for "Yet
another GTK IRC client". GTK was in around version 1.0 back then,
and it had a lot of features/bugs which I found all the time as I
tried to do some "different" things than other people. These
sometimes prevented me of doing something some feature I wanted.
So, in summer 1998 I went to army and I passed development of yagIRC
to two guys, they did a few new features and released a version or
two, but finally (in summer 1999?) they put a message to web page
which told that they finally had stopped developing it entirely,
also saying that my code was a total mess :) (yes, it was a mess)
I got out of the army 1.1.1999. I promised to myself that I wouldn't
do another IRC client, but after trying to use BitchX a while, I
started dreaming about an IRC client which would have an excellent
look and feel. After trying various things, I only came up with the
GNOME panel applet which people still tell me that it's a great
feature. I was more like thinking some pretty little icons in
some corner telling me about new messages and other stuff..
I thought that I would keep Irssi a small project, just doing a few
little features that *I* wanted, nothing for others. But after few
versions and few interested people, I started coding it more and
more generic..
Finally, after releasing version 0.6.0 (february, 1999) I realized
that things were getting into a big mess again. I started a rewrite,
I organized the code into irc-base, irc-extra, user interface and
GUI directories, created the signalling system for letting them
communicate themselves easily and released 0.7.0. This was the base
for the rest of the 0.7.x releases, and it did work pretty well.
The signalling system was excellent, for example creating text mode
version was really easy and you didn't need tens of (empty) gui_xxx()
functions like in the yagIRC days. Maintaining the text and GTK
versions separately was really easy too.
About a year later after releasing Irssi 0.7.0, I started having
dreams about an IRC client that would be extremely modular, like you
could upgrade the client to newer version ON THE FLY without needing
to even disconnect from the servers. I started a project codenamed
i2k, I took the code from Irssi, split it into more directories and
changed quite a lot of the code to work a bit differently.
I developed i2k quite a long, until I finally gave up with it since
it could do only some basic things, and Irssi 0.7 really needed
maintaining. After a while I got an idea, maybe I could merge the
code from the i2k to Irssi more easily than rewriting the whole
client. This was more easier than I thought. It's now been two
months since I started it, and Irssi 0.8 is looking absolutely
excellent.
0.2 Irssi 0.8
Irssi 0.8 is my fourth try to create the perfect IRC client.
This time I'm concentrating to the code. I try to avoid kludges, I
try to make as simple code as I can, and I try to provide enough
easy to use functions so that extending Irssi is as simple as
possible. I also try to keep the "bloat" features in scripts or
modules instead of build-in.
I think I'm succeeded with these goals pretty well, there's some
small problems but everything in the big picture looks great.
0.3 Future
What about Irssi 1.0, what will it look like?
I was thinking about the Linux kernel versioning and keeping
Irssi 0.8 a stable version all the time while developing new
features only to Irssi 0.9. After 0.9 is finished, it will be
called 0.10 or 1.0 depending if I think it's ready to be called 1.0.
1.0's goal is that it has all the possible features anyone will
ever need. If not build-in, then in scripts or loadable modules.
Not very small goal :)
0.4 This documentation
Strange, I just created the index list and started writing this.
I've never been too good at documentation and I usually don't like
writing it, but after coding so much recently and seeing that the
NEWS file was getting *SO* large, I thought that I had to put all
these features down somewhere so people (and me!) would find them.
1. Command line parameters
--connect -c <server> Connect to server at startup
--port -p <port> - specify port
--noconnect -! Don't autoconnect to any servers at startup
--nick -n Specify what nick to use
--hostname -h Specify what host name to use
2. Message levels
Message levels (or in short, levels) are used almost everywhere.
They describe what kind of messages we're dealing with. Here's a
list of them all:
CRAP - Can be almost anything
MSGS - Private messages
PUBLIC - Public messages in channel
NOTICES - Notices
SNOTES - Server notices
CTCPS - CTCP messages
ACTIONS - Actions (/me) - usually ORed with PUBLIC or MSGS
JOINS - Someone joins a channel
PARTS - Someone parts a channel
QUITS - Someone quits IRC
KICKS - Someone gets kicked from channel
MODES - Channel mode is changed
TOPICS - Channel topic is changed
WALLOPS - Wallop is received
INVITES - Invite is received
NICKS - Someone changes nick
DCC - DCC related messages
DCCMSGS - DCC chat messages
CLIENTNOTICES - Irssi's notices
CLIENTERRORS - Irssi's error messages
CLIENTCRAP - Some other messages from Irssi
And a few special ones that could be included with the
levels above:
HILIGHT - Text is highlighted
NOHILIGHT - Don't check highlighting for this message
NO_ACT - Don't trigger channel activity when printing
this message
NEVER - Never ignore or log this message
3. Flood protection
3.1 Command flood protection
Most (all?) IRC servers' flood protection works like this
(from RFC 1459):
--------
* check to see if client's `message timer' is less than
current time (set to be equal if it is);
* read any data present from the client;
* while the timer is less than ten seconds ahead of the current
time, parse any present messages and penalize the client by
2 seconds for each message;
which in essence means that the client may send 1 message every 2
seconds without being adversely affected.
--------
Irssi's flood protection works the same way, except it penalizes
2.2 seconds by default for each message (helps with some servers).
You can change it with /SET cmd_queue_speed <milliseconds>. You can
also change the number of commands before flood protection activates
(ie. the burst count) with /SET cmds_max_at_once <count>.
IRC servers also have an input buffer where the client's commands
are saved before processed. It's size is server specific (can be as
low as 1k!) If it gets full, the server kicks you out (the
"Excess flood" quit message). Irssi's flood protecion protects this
pretty well with small commands, but if you send many big commands
(like >400 char long messages) fast, you could get easily kicked out.
Normally this isn't problem, but if you have scripts sending long
messages, you should remember this. I'm not sure how much you should
wait between the long messages, but 2 seconds isn't enough.
This protection is used with all commands sent to server, so you
don't need to worry about it with your scripts.
3.2 CTCP flood protection
Other people can pretty easily flood you with CTCP requests, and
even if you wouldn't get kicked out from the server, they could
easily grow your command queue. So, Irssi's CTCP flood protection
works like this:
First it checks how big the CTCP reply queue is, if it's longer
than `max_ctcp_queue', the CTCP is ignored. You can change it with
/SET max_ctcp_queue <count> (default is 5).
After this the CTCP reply is placed to server's "idle queue", so
the reply is sent "when there's extra time", this means that if
you are busy sending other commands, it might take a while before
the reply is sent.
3.3 Detecting floods
Irssi is all the time automatically checking different flooding,
when flood is noticed, it sends "flood" signal. This can be easily
used for example to create a script for kicking channel flooders.
Autoignore uses this also, see section 10.2.
Flood is detected when more than `flood_max_msgs' same kind of
messages arrives in `flood_timecheck' seconds to same target
(channel or private msg) so it isn't flooding if same user sends a
message to 10 different channels you are on, but it is flooding if
10 messages are sent to same channel by the same user.
Currently only messages, notices and ctcps are checked for
flooding.
/SET flood_max_msgs = <count>, default is 4
/SET flood_timecheck = <seconds>, default is 5 seconds
If either of these is 0, the flood checking is disabled.
4. Configuration
4.1 Configuration files
The configuration is saved to ~/.irssi/config file. You can edit
it with text editor if you want, you can also add comments to it
and they stay there even if /SAVE is used. Comments are the lines
starting with # character. Any errors in config file are displayed
at startup.
Irssi uses it's own config library for handling the config file.
The format is pretty much the same as in libPropList and should be
easily understandable.
You can reload the config file on the fly with /RELOAD command, you
can also read a different config file with /RELOAD <filename>.
If you change any settings, they aren't saved to file until you use
/SAVE. You can save the config file to different place with
/SAVE <filename>.
4.2 Settings
You can view or change the settings with /SET command.
/SET without any arguments displays all the settings.
/SET <key> displays settings which key (partly) matches <key>
/SET <key> <value> sets <key> to <value>
Boolean settings accepts only values ON, OFF and TOGGLE. You can
also use /TOGGLE command to change them, so /TOGGLE <key> behaves
like /SET <key> TOGGLE. /TOGGLE also accepts arguments ON and OFF
when /TOGGLE behaves exactly like /SET.
Remember that changes are not saved until you use /SAVE!
5. Servers
5.1 Generic
Irssi is multi-server friendly. You can be connected to multiple
different servers, or the same server multiple times. Most of the
settings that let you specify the channel, let you also specify IRC
network.
Servers are referenced by a "server tag". If the server is known
to belong to some IRC network, the tag is the IRC network's name,
like "IRCnet". If the IRC network is unknown, the tag is created
from the server's name, like irc.funet.fi -> funet. If the tag
already exists, a number is added to the end of it and raised until
unused tag is found.
Quit messages have a small problem if there's already a few
commands in server's input command queue. If the server's socket is
disconnected immediately after QUIT message is sent, it is possible
that the server didn't yet process the quit command and your quit
message will be "broken pipe" or something similiar. The right thing
to do is to let the server disconnect you, but what if the
connection to server is broken and the server never disconnects you?
I solved the problem by waiting a few seconds to see if the server
disconnects us. If it didn't, force the disconnect. This explains
the (a bit annoying) "waiting for servers to close connections"
message when quiting Irssi. Most IRC clients just ignore this whole
problem, but I hate it if my quit message isn't displayed right.
5.2 IRC networks
Different IRC networks behave a bit differently, and to be as
efficient as possible, Irssi needs to know a few things about them
or the safe defaults will be used. The default configuration file
contains the settings for the biggest IRC networks.
/NETWORK ADD [-kicks <count>] [-msgs <count>] [-modes <count>]
[-whois <count>] [-cmdspeed <ms>] [-cmdmax <count>]
[-nick <nick>] [-user <user>] [-realname <name>]
[-host <host>] [-autosendcmd <cmd>] <name>
-kicks: Maximum number of nicks in one /KICK command
-msgs: Maximum number of nicks in one /MSG command
-modes: Maximum number of mode changes in one /MODE command
-whois: Maximum number of nicks in one /WHOIS command
-cmdspeed: Same as /SET cmd_queue_speed, see section 3.1
-cmdmax: Same as /SET cmds_max_at_once, see section 3.1
-nick, -user, -realname: Specify what nick/user/name to use
-host: Specify what host name to use, if you have multiple
-autosendcmd: Command to send after connecting to a server
With -autosendcmd argument you can automatically run any commands
after connecting to the network. This is useful for automatically
identifying yourself to NickServ, for example
/NETWORK ADD -autosendcmd "/msg NickServ identify secret" freenode
/NETWORK REMOVE <name>
5.3 Manually connecting and disconnecting
To connect to a new server, use:
/CONNECT [-network <network>] [-host <hostname>] <address>|<network>
[<port> [<password> [<nick>]]]
If there's no password, set it to -. You can directly connect to
IRC server in specified address, or you can connect to some IRC
network and Irssi will pick the server for you.
You don't need to specify the IRC network, password, nick, etc. if
you setup the server using /SERVER ADD (see next section). If the
settings can't be found there either, Irssi will use the defaults:
/SET default_nick = <nick>, defaults to user_name
/SET alternate_nick = <nick>, defaults to <default_nick>_
/SET user_name = <user>, defaults to your login name
/SET real_name = <name>, taken from /etc/passwd by default
/SET hostname = <host>, what host name to use when connecting
/SET skip_motd ON|OFF|TOGGLE - Don't show server's MOTD
NOTE: /CONNECT is also a command for IRC operators to connect IRC
servers to other IRC servers. If you want to use it, use /SCONNECT
instead.
You can disconnect from the server with:
/DISCONNECT *|<tag> [message]
If message isn't given, Irssi will use the default quit message. You
can set it with /SET quit_message <message>, default is "leaving".
/SERVER disconnects the server in active window and connects to new
one. It will take the same arguments as /CONNECT. If you prefix the
address with + character, Irssi won't disconnect the active server,
and it will create a new window where the server is connected
(ie. /window new hide;/connect address)
/SERVER without any arguments displays list of connected servers.
5.4 Server settings
/SERVER ADD [-auto | -noauto] [-network <network>] [-host <hostname>]
[-cmdspeed <ms>] [-cmdmax <count>] [-port <port>]
<address> [<port> [<password>]]
-auto: Automatically connect to server at startup
-noauto: Don't connect to server at startup (default)
-network: Specify what IRC network this server belongs to
-ircnet: Same as -network. Deprecated. Do not use.
-host: Specify what host name to use, if you have multiple
-cmdspeed: Same as /SET cmd_queue_speed, see section 3.1
-cmdmax: Same as /SET cmds_max_at_once, see section 3.1
-port: This is pretty much like the port argument later, except
this can be used to modify existing server's port.
/SERVER REMOVE <address> [<port>]
/SERVER LIST
Servers are identified by their name and port. You can have multiple
entries for the same server name but in different ports. This is
useful for IRC proxies, in one port you could have IRCNet proxy,
another port would have EFNet, etc.
If you wish to change existing server's port to something else, use
-port command. For example if you had irc.server.org in port 6667
and you wanted to change it to port 6668, use command:
/SERVER ADD -port 6668 irc.server.org 6667
If you want to remove some settings from existing server, for
example hostname, just give -host "" parameters to it.
After connected to server, Irssi can automatically change your user
mode. You can set it with /SET usermode <mode>, default is +i.
/SET resolve_prefer_ipv6 - If ON, prefer IPv6 for hosts that
have both v4 and v6 addresses.
5.5 Automatic reconnecting
If you get disconnected from server, Irssi will try to reconnect
back to some of the servers in the same IRC network. To prevent
flooding the server that doesn't let you in (and avoiding K-lines),
Irssi won't try to reconnect to the same server more often than
once in `server_reconnect_time' seconds. You can change it with
/SET server_reconnect_time <seconds>, default is 5 minutes.
After reconnected to server, Irssi will re-set your user mode, away
message and will join you back to the same channels where you were
before the connection was lost.
You can see list of the reconnections with /SERVER. The servers
that have tag as RECON-n are the reconnections. You can remove them
with /DISCONNECT <tag>, and you can reconnect to them immediately
with /RECONNECT <n>. /RECONNECT without any arguments will
disconnect from the active server and reconnect back immediately.
5.6 Server redirections
Getting replies matched to IRC commands can be quite complicated.
Server redirection allow this in a relatively easy way. They are
used internally and are available to scripts; see Server redirections
in perl.txt for details.
5.7 Server idle command queue
There's some situations when you want to ask something from the
server which isn't really important. For example when connected
to server and you didn't get your nick, Irssi asks with /WHOIS
who has your nick and displays it. But if you already have a lot of
commands in buffer, like you just autojoined to many channels,
you'd rather first let the JOIN commands to be sent to server
This is where server idle queue gets into picture. Commands in
idle queue are sent to server when there's nothing else in the
normal command queue.
Idle queue works with server redirections, so you can ask something
from server when it has time and your function is called when the
reply is received.
5.8 Net splits
Irssi keeps track of people who were lost in net splits. You can
get a list of them with /NETSPLIT command.
Another use for this is with bots. Channel master can op anyone in
the channel and the bot happily accepts it. But if the opped user
is lost behind a net split and in netjoin the server gives ops for
the user, the bot should decide if the user (who isn't in bot's user
database) is a malicious attacker who should be deopped, or if
he/she/it is just some user that already had ops before the net
split.
/SET hide_netsplit_quits - If ON, hide all netsplit quit messages
and display only "Netsplit host1 host2: nicks".
/SET netsplit_max_nicks - If non-zero, limit the number of nicks
printed in netsplit message and add "(+<n> more, use /NETSPLIT
to show all of them)" text.
5.9 Lag checking
Irssi will constantly check how big the lag to the server is. It is
done by sending PING commands. Lag checking is disabled for broken
servers that do not support PING.
If the lag is too big, Irssi will reconnect to different IRC server.
This is sometimes useful if the connection has been stuck for 30
minutes but it still hasn't been closed.
/SET lag_check_time <time> - Specifies how often to check the lag.
If it is set to 0, the lag detection is disabled. Default
is 1 minute.
/SET lag_max_before_disconnect <time> - Specifies how big the lag
can be before reconnecting to another server. Default is 5
minutes.
/SET lag_min_show <time> - Specifies the minimum lag to display
in status bar. Default is 1 second.
5.10 Raw log
All data that is received or sent to server is kept in a raw log
buffer for a while. Also event redirections are kept there. This is
very useful for debugging purposes.
/RAWLOG SAVE <filename> - Save the current raw log buffer to file
/RAWLOG OPEN <filename> - Like /RAWLOG SAVE, but keep the log file
open and write all new log to it.
/RAWLOG CLOSE - Close the open raw log
/SET rawlog_lines <count> - Specify the number of raw log lines to
keep in memory.
6. Channels
6.1 Generic
There's several types of channels you can join, here's a list of
the ones that Irssi supports:
#channel - Normal channels, most commonly used
+channel - Modeless channels, channel has no modes, no channel
operators and no topic. This way no-one is above others
and there's no operator-wars etc. But on the other hand,
you can't kick any troublemakers..
&channel - Local channels, these channels aren't distributed outside
the IRC server. IRCNet has replaced server notices with
several different &channels (&ERRORS, &NOTICES, etc.)
!channel - New channels, currently supported only by IRCNet. These
channels are designed so that they can't be taken over
with net splits. /JOIN !channel joins to existing
!channel, /JOIN !!channel creates a new channel.
Most of the commands that take channel name as parameter, can also
accept * as the channel name, which means the active channel.
6.2 Joining, parting
Channels can be joined with /JOIN command. You can join to multiple
channels with one /JOIN by giving it a comma-separated list of
channels, like /JOIN #channel1,#channel2. If you don't give the
channel mode character (#+&!) before the channel name, Irssi
automatically uses # channels.
Channel names may contain any characters except SPACE, BELL, NUL,
CR, LF or comma (','). On IRCnet and a few other networks, you can
also restrict the channel to only certain servers by adding the
mask to the end of the channel name separated with a ':'
character, for example #channel:*.fi lets only people on .fi
servers join the channel. Other servers will not even know about
the channel. This is pretty difficult to use, since everyone will
have to always join #channel:*.fi; #channel and #channel:*.fi are
different channels. Ban exceptions (+e) and especially invite
lists (+I) replace this functionality pretty well, see section 6.5.
If channel has a password (aka. key), you can join it with
/JOIN #channel pass, or multiple channels with passwords with
/JOIN #secret1,#public,#secret2 pass1,x,pass2
#public didn't have any password, so we used "x" as it's password.
It doesn't really matter what password you send with channels that
don't have passwords.
If you want to join to channel in different server than active one
in window, you can do it with /JOIN -<server tag> #channel, like
/JOIN -efnet #irssi.
You can leave channels with /PART [<channels>] [<part message>].
For example "/PART byebye all" leaves the active channel with
"byebye all" message, or /PART #chan1,#chan2 leaves those channels.
NOTE: Sending JOIN 0 directly to server (/quote join 0) leaves all
the channels you are joined. There's been some jokes about joining
for example to #2000,0 where the server actually leaves you from all
channels. With Irssi this isn't really a problem, since irssi would
happily join to channels #2000 and #0.
6.3 Automatic joining
Irssi can automatically join to specified channels in specified
IRC networks. It can also automatically send the password when
manually joining to channel without specifying the password.
/CHANNEL ADD [-auto | -noauto] [-bots <masks>] [-botcmd <command>]
<channel> <network> [<password>]
With -bots and -botcmd arguments you can automatically send
commands to someone in channel. This is useful for automatically
getting ops for channels, for example
/CHANNEL ADD -auto -bots "*!bot@bothost.org bot*!*@host2.org"
-botcmd "msg $0 op mypass" #channel ircnet
You can also use the -botcmd without -bots argument. The command is
then sent whenever you join the channel.
If you want to remove some settings from existing channel record,
for example bots, just give the -bots "" parameters to it. Password
can be removed by setting it to - (or actually, "" works too).
You can remove the channels with
/CHANNEL REMOVE <channel> <network>
/CHANNEL LIST displays list of channels with settings.
/CHANNEL without any arguments displays list of channels you have
joined. You can also use /CHANNEL to join to channels just as with
/JOIN, like /CHANNEL #a.
6.4 After-join automation
When joined to channel, Irssi asks some information about it.
After it has got all of it, it prints the "Channel synchronized"
text. The following information is asked:
- Channel mode
- WHO list to get nicks' hosts - useful for /BAN for example
- Ban list - useful for allowing /UNBAN to use wildcards
If you have joined many channels at once, Irssi tries to optimize
the commands it sends to server. Instead of sending two commands
to ask two channels' mode, it just sends MODE #a,#b. Same thing with
WHO list and ban lists. Some servers do not support this and they
reply with different kinds of error messages, Irssi tries to deal
with them all right and resend the commands again separately.
However, some strange servers sometimes use some weird error replies
that Irssi doesn't know about, and the channel never gets
synchronized. If this happens with some server you know, please
let the Irssi's author know about it.
6.5 Channel modes
Common channel modes are:
i - Invite only - People can't join to channel without being
/INVITEd, or being in invite list (+I, see below).
m - Moderated - People who don't have voices (+v) can't send
messages to channel
p - Private - People who aren't joined to channel can't see it
for example with /WHOISing people who are in channel.
s - Secret - Like private, but the channel isn't displayed in
/LIST's output.
n - No external msgs - Without this mode, anyone can send messages
to channel without even being joined.
t - Topic can be changed only by channel operators.
k <key> - Channel password (aka. key) - The channel can't be joined
without specifying the channel key (see section 6.2).
l <count> - User limit - No more than <count> people can join to
channel. This can be overridden with /INVITE with some
servers.
This is usually used for protecting channel from join
flooding, like some bot allows max. 5 users to join in
one minute or so.
b - Set/remove ban. For example MODE #channel +b *!*@*.org bans
everyone from .org domain.
If someone from .org domain was already in channel before the
ban was set, he/she cannot send any messages to channel (doesn't
work with all servers).
Bans can also be overridden with /INVITE, although many stupid
IRC clients automatically kick the user out because they see
the ban and think that because of it the user shouldn't be in
the channel (doesn't work with all servers).
e - Ban exceptions. You could for example ban everyone from
*!*@*.org but set ban exception to *!*@*.host.org - does not work
with all servers.
I - Invite list. If channel is invite only (+i), people in this
list can join it without being /INVITEd - does not work with all
servers.
This is excellent for in-country channels that don't want
foreigners (spammers!) to join the channel, for example setting
channel's mode to +i and +I *!*@*.fi allows only finnish people
to join the channel. In addition to this, there's usually a bot
in the channels and sending /MSG bot invite command to it
/INVITEs you to the channel.
On IRCnet, the ':' feature in channel names can also be used for
a similar effect, see section 6.2.
o <nick> - Grant or revoke channel operator status from nick
v <nick> - Grant or revoke voice status from nick, only people with
+v (or +o) can talk to channel when it's moderated (+m).
You can send multiple mode changes with one mode command:
/MODE #channel +nto-o+v nick1,nick2,nick3
This would set channel's mode to +nt, give ops to nick1, take ops
from nick2 and give voices to nick3.
You can set only limited number of modes that requires argument in
one command. In IRCnet it's 3, in EFnet it's 4 and in many others
it's 6. If it's not known, Irssi defaults to 3. Irssi will also
automatically split them, so you can use /MODE +oooooo n1,n2,..
command to op 6 people and Irssi will split it to two commands in
IRCnet/EFnet.
Many networks have additional modes and/or change the meaning of existing
modes. Check the documentation for the network or the server software in
use for details.
Instead of manually setting o, v and b modes you probably want to
use /OP, /DEOP, /VOICE, /DEVOICE, /BAN and /UNBAN commands.
/OP, /DEOP, /VOICE and /DEVOICE commands allows wildcards as their
argument. So /OP ni* will op all non-opped people whose nick start
with "ni". /DEOP * will deop everyone else except you. /VOICE and
/DEVOICE work the same way.
6.6 Bans
You can give /BAN a list of nicks or whole ban masks. /UNBAN
accepts wildcards, so if you have ban nick!user@reallylonghost.org,
you can simply unban it with /UNBAN *really*
Using /BAN <nicks>, Irssi will automatically create the mask. You
can change the way it's created with the ban_type setting:
/SET ban_type normal|host|domain|custom
Normal - *!user@*.domain.net
Host - *!*@host.domain.net
Domain - *!*@*.domain.net
Custom [nick] [user] [host] [domain]
eg. /SET ban_type custom nick domain - nick!*@*.domain.net
eg. /SET ban_type custom user host - *!user@host.domain.net
Irssi has also a couple of commands to help banning people:
/KICKBAN [<channel>] <nick> <reason> - ban and kick the nick
/KNOCKOUT [<seconds>] <nick> <reason> - kickban the nick, unban
after waiting <seconds>, default is 5 minutes.
6.7 Massjoins
Automatic opping the nick right after joined to channel is a pretty
commonly used. What mostly irritates me with this is that the nick
may be opped multiple times by different people, or after netsplits
when the people join back, the server will op them, but still the
bots op the people again, even if it was just done by the server.
Irssi has this feature that it sends a "massjoin" signal a while
after the real join. If someone has already opped the nick, you can
easily check it in the massjoin signal handler.
The default is to report maximum of 5 joins in one massjoin signal.
If the 5 joins don't come in 5 seconds, the signal is sent anyway.
You can change these with /SET massjoin_max_wait <milliseconds> and
/SET massjoin_max_joins <count>.
7. IRC commands and features (FIXME)
7.x Basic commands
7.x IRC operator commands
7.x Away features
8. Notify list
Notify list is generally used for knowing when someone you know
comes to IRC or leaves from IRC. Traditionally notify list can
handle only a list of nicks, no nick masks etc. I lost interest to
traditional notify lists long time ago, since the people I know
are in IRC all the time. So I made a bit more featureful notify
list:
/NOTIFY [-list] [-away] <mask> [network [network...]]
-away: Notifies about away-status changes
-list: Lists the notify list entries with all their settings
<mask>: Either a simple "nick" or "nick!*@*blah.org". The nick
can't contain wildcards, but the user/host can.
/UNNOTIFY <mask>
/NOTIFY without any arguments displays if the people in notify
list are online or offline.
9. Text highlighting
Irssi supports highlighting lines that match the specified pattern.
You can also change the color of the nicks that match specified nick
mask, so you could for example show your friends' nicks with
different color.
/HILIGHT [-mask | -regexp | -word] [-nick] [-color <color>]
[-level <level>] [-channels <channels>] <text>
-mask: Match only for nick, <text> is a nick mask
-regexp: <text> is a regular expression
-word: <text> must match to full words
-nick: Hilight only the nick, not the whole line
-color: Print the reply with <color>. color is in %code format
(see docs/formats.txt)
-level: Match only for <level> messages, default is
publics,msgs,notices,actions
-channels: Match only in <channels>
/DEHILIGHT <ref#> | <text>
/HILIGHT without any arguments displays list of the hilights.
If <color> is a
number, Irssi will treat it as a MIRC color code. You can also use
bolds (^B), underlines (^_) etc. as <color> if you like.
10. Ignoring
10.1 Manual ignoring
Irssi's ignoring options should be enough for everyone :)
/IGNORE [-regexp | -word] [-pattern <pattern>] [-replies] [-except]
[-channels <channel>] <mask> <levels> <^levels>
-regexp: <pattern> is a regular expression
-word: <pattern> must match to full words
-pattern: <pattern> must match to the message's text
-replies: Ignore replies to nick in channels. For example
"/IGNORE -replies *!*@*.fi PUBLIC" ignores everyone
from Finland, but also anyone sending message
"tofinnishnick: blahblah".
-except: *DON'T* ignore
-channels: Ignore only in channels
<mask>: Either a nick mask or list of channels
<levels>: List of levels to ignore
<^levels>: List of levels to NOT ignore
(/ignore -except nick notices = /ignore nick ^notices)
/UNIGNORE <ref#> | <mask>
/IGNORE without any arguments displays list of ignores.
The best match always wins, so you can have:
/IGNORE * CTCPS
/IGNORE -except *!*@host.org CTCPS
10.2 Automatic ignoring
Irssi can automatically set ignores for people who flood you.
Currently you can autoignore MSGS, NOTICES, CTCPS and PUBLIC.
Actions are placed to either MSGS or PUBLIC. See section 3.3 for
definition of the flood.
/SET autoignore_time <seconds> specifies how long to ignore the
user.
/SET autoignore_levels <levels> specifies what levels to ignore
automatically, default is to ignore only CTCPS.
11. Logging
11.1 Basic logging
/LOG OPEN [-noopen] [-autoopen] [-targets <targets>]
[-window] <filename> [<levels>]
-noopen: Create the entry to log list, but don't start logging
-autoopen: Automatically open this log file at startup
-targets: Log only in specified channels/nicks
-window: Log the active window
<filename>: File name where to log, it is parsed with
strftime(), so %d=day, etc. see "man strftime" for
more info. Irssi will automatically check every hour
if log should be rotated.
<levels>: Defaults to ALL
/LOG CLOSE <ref#> | <fname> - Close log and remove from log list
/LOG START <ref#> | <fname> - Start logging to file
/LOG STOP <ref#> | <fname> - Stop logging to file
/LOG without any arguments displays the log list
/SET log_create_mode <mode> - Specifies what file mode to use with
the created log files. Default is 0644.
All of these are parsed with strftime():
/SET log_timestamp <text> - Specifies the time stamp format.
Default is "%H:%M ".
/SET log_open_string <text> - Text written to log when it's opened
/SET log_close_string <text> - Text written to log when it's closed
/SET log_day_changed <text> - Text written to log when day changes
NOTE: Log files are locked after opened, so two Irssis can't
accidentally try to write to the same log file.
Examples:
/LOG OPEN -targets cras ~/irclogs/cras.log MSGS
- Logs all messages from/to nick `cras'
/LOG OPEN -targets #linux ~/irclogs/linux/linux-%Y-%m-%d
- Logs all messages in channel #linux. Log is rotated daily, so
logs in 1. May 2000 goes to file "linux-2000-05-01", when the
day is changed, Irssi closes the log and starts logging to
"linux-2000-05-02" etc.
11.2 Window logging
/WINDOW LOG ON|OFF|TOGGLE [<filename>]
Start/stop logging the active window. This works exactly like
/LOG OPEN -window.
/WINDOW LOGFILE <filename>
Sets the default log file to use in the window, it can be
overridden with specifying the file name in /WINDOW LOG. If no file
name isn't given, Irssi defaults to ~/irc.log.<windowname> or
~/irc.log.Window<ref#> if window doesn't have name.
Creates the entry to log list, same as /LOG OPEN -window -noopen.
Also, if /WINDOW LOG ON is used it starts logging to this file.
11.3 Automatic logging
This is the logging method that I had been asked to implement for
ages, and it is really simple to use too. It logs only messages
that have "targets", ie. private messages and channel specific
messages (msgs, modes, topics, etc). WHOIS replies and such aren't
logged. If you with to log them too, use the /LOG command.
So, when for example a private messages comes to you from "guy"
nick, Irssi creates a log file ~/irclogs/guy.log for it. After few
minutes of inactivity, the log file is closed.
/SET AUTOLOG ON|OFF|TOGGLE - Enable/disable autolog.
/SET AUTOLOG_LEVEL <level> - Specifies what levels to log, default
is ALL.
/SET AUTOLOG_PATH <path> - expandos (see special_vars.txt) can be
used, $0 is the target. If you are using multiple servers, it makes
sense to use the server tag as part of the file name, for example
~/irclogs/$tag/$0.log (this is the default). The directories are
created automatically.
11.4 Awaylog
Irssi logs specified messages when you're away. After you set
yourself unaway, Irssi will display all the messages in the awaylog.
/SET awaylog_level <level> - Default is MSGS HILIGHT
/SET awaylog_file <filename> - Default is ~/.irssi/away.log
You can disable this feature by setting awaylog_level to NONE.
16. Recode
irssi supports selective encoding of incoming/outgoing messages
through the recode system. All incoming/outgoing messages can be
optionally converted to/from the charset specified by the
`term_charset' variable (which defaults to the locale encoding and
should _not_ be changed in most cases), by setting the `recode'
variable to 'ON'.
Since there is no way in IRC to know the encoding associated to a
message, for incoming messages irssi uses the following algorithm:
if `recode_autodetect_utf8' is 'ON' and the message is valid UTF-8 the
encoding is assumed to be UTF-8.
if an encoding is set for the target (through /recode) use it,
otherwise fallback to the value of `recode_fallback'.
For outgoing messages it is simpler:
if an encoding is set for the target (through /recode) use it,
otherwise fallback to the value of `recode_out_default_charset'.
/SET recode_transliterate - Append '//TRANSLIT' to the destination
encoding for both incoming/outgoing messages. '//TRANSLIT' is a GNU
iconv specific extension to peform transliteration (locale dependent)
when a character is not representable in the destination encoding.
.. no, the docs end here, I got bored of writing these after a few days and
haven't touched these since then.