View source for IRC

You've probably been sent here for making a booboo on Internet Relay Chat (IRC). 

[[IRC:1]] Search first, ask last.

[[IRC:2]] U.S. Politics

[[IRC:3]] Asking to ask

[[IRC:4]] Wrong channel

[[IRC:5]] LART

[[IRC:6]] Search that question/term

[[IRC:7]] Don't private message a stranger

[[IRC:8]] Long URL

[[IRC:9]] Clarify your question

[[Rtfm]]

[[Internet:Help Process]]

[[Irc::Wishlist]]

== IRC ==

Many of the editors of this [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki Wiki]] hang out, or at least [[lurk]], in the #unixhelp IRC channel on [[EFNet]].  Anyone is welcome to join the channel and ask questions (but please have a look at the several items in the list above first!).

If you have not used IRC before, you will need to obtain a client (see the list below), and connect to an IRC server.  Using <code>irc.efnet.net</code> should connect you to one of several available servers.


== Clients ==

For [[UBO]]s:
[http://www.xchat.org/ xchat] is the most popular GUI client.
Some ncurses based clients are:
[http://www.irssi.org/ irssi],
[http://www.epicsol.org/ epic], and
[http://www.bitchx.org BitchX]

For Windows:
[http://www.mirc.com Mirc] is by far the most popular.


== Commands ==


There are many IRC servers and networks of servers. In this example, we'll connect to a network of servers called EFnet. So if you do

 /server irc.efnet.org

in your IRC client, it will connect you to one of the EFNet servers. Once you're connected,
you'll see the MOTD (Message of the day) scroll by. You're now connected
to a server. Now you join whatever channel you want.

 /join #irchelp

will put you in a popular IRC help channel. You can be on many channels at once, so you might also want to:

 /join #help

for more generalized help. If you want to see what channels are on a given server:

 /list