Connecting with Irssi

Irssi is a command-line IRC client that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Inside irssi, type:

/network add network-bnc
/server add -network network-bnc -auto -tls_verify example.ircnow.org 31337 username/network:password
/save
/connect network-bnc

Replace example.ircnow.org with your bouncer server address; replace network with your real network, username with your real username, password with your real password. For example, if your username is john, the network you want to connect to is ircnow, and your password is abcde12345:

/network add ircnow-bnc
/server add -network ircnow-bnc -auto -tls_verify bnc.ircnow.org 31337 john/ircnow:abcde12345
/save
/connect ircnow-bnc

If you get a message saying ZNC is not yet connected, type /quote znc connect.

Attach:irssi.png

Editing .irssi/config

In ~/.irssi/config, inside servers, add this block:

servers = (
  {
    address = "example.ircnow.org";
    chatnet = "network-bnc";
    port = "31337";
    password = "username/network:password";
    use_tls = "yes";
    tls_verify = "yes";
    tls_cafile = "~/.irssi/certs/CAs.pem";
    autoconnect = "yes";
  },
)

Suppose you want to connect to an ircnow bouncer at bnc.ircnow.org. Here is what that block might look like:

servers = (
  {
    address = "bnc.ircnow.org";
    chatnet = "ircnow-bnc";
    port = "31337";
    password = "john/ircnow:abcde12345";
    use_tls = "yes";
    tls_verify = "yes";
    tls_cafile = "~/.irssi/certs/CAs.pem";
    autoconnect = "yes";
  },
)

Notice that the address must be the address of your bouncer; you want to connect first to the bouncer, then have the bouncer connect to another network.

If you have issues with SSL verification, make sure you have CAs.pem located in the right folder. On OpenBSD, you would do this:

$ mkdir -p ~/.irssi/certs
$ cp /etc/ssl/cert.pem ~/.irssi/certs/CAs.pem

To connect to multiple networks, use additional server blocks.