New to IRC? Learning a new tool or protocol can be intimidating! Check out the Beginner’s Guide to walk you through some of the basics and get you up and running.
Building and installing on KISS Linux using the Community repository:
kiss b kirc
kiss i kirc
Building and installing on Arch and Arch-based distros using the AUR:
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/kirc-git.git
cd kirc
makepkg -si
Building and installing from source (works on Raspbian, Debian, Ubuntu and many other Unix distributions):
git clone https://github.com/mcpcpc/kirc.git
cd kirc
make
make install
Consult man kirc for a full list and explanation of available arguments.
kirc [-s server] [-p port] [-n nick] [-c chan] ...
<message> Send a PRIVMSG to the current channel.
@<channel|nick> <message> Send a message to a specified channel or nick.
@@<channel|nick> <message> Send a CTCP ACTION message to a specified channel or nick.
/<command> Send command to IRC server (see RFC 2812 for full list).
/#<channel> Assign new default message channel.
A number of key bindings have been supplied to make text editing and string manipulation a breeze!
CTRL+B or LEFT ARROW move the cursor one character to the left.
CTRL+F or RIGHT ARROW move the cursor one character to the right.
CTRL+P or UP ARROW move to previous record in the input history buffer.
CTRL+N or DOWN ARROW move to next record in the input history buffer.
CTRL+E move the cursor to the end of the line.
CTRL+A or HOME move the cursor to the start of the line.
CTRL+W delete the previous word.
CTRL+U delete the entire line.
CTRL+K delete the from current character to end of line.
CTRL+D delete the character to the right of cursor.
CTRL+C force quit kirc.
CTRL+T swap character at cursor with previous character.
CTRL+H equivalent to backspace.
In some instances, it may beneficial to pass additional server commands at the command line. For this, the -x argument is especially useful as it sends additional commands after nick identification (but prior to joining channels or the main event-handler actions).
For instance, to log into a libera.chat server account at the time of connection, one could pass the appropriate ‘Identify’ command:
kirc -n '<nickname>' -x 'privmsg NickServ :identify <username> <password>'
Note that supplying a password in this manner (e.g. plain-text) is not advisable on public systems or those with shared resources/accounts.
There is no native TLS/SSL support. Instead, users can achieve this functionality by using third-party utilities (e.g. stunnel, socat, ghosttunnel, etc).
An example using socat. Remember to replace items enclosed with <>.
socat tcp-listen:6667,reuseaddr,fork,bind=127.0.0.1 ssl:<irc-server>:6697
kirc -s 127.0.0.1 -c '<channel>' -n '<nickname>' -r '<realname>'
Similar to the TLS example, we can use third-party utilities, such as stunnel or socat, to connect to a proxy server.
socat tcp-listen:6667,fork,reuseaddr,bind=127.0.0.1 proxy:<proxyurl>:irc.libera.chat:6667,proxyport=<proxyport>
kirc -s 127.0.0.1 -p 6667 -c '<channel>' -n '<nickname>' -r '<realname>'
In order to connect using SASL PLAIN mechanism authentication, the user must provide the required token during the initial connection. If the authentication token is base64 encoded and, therefore, can be generated a number of ways. For example, using Python, one could use the following:
python -c 'import base64; print(base64.encodebytes(b"nick\x00nick\x00password"))'
For example, lets assume an authentication identity of jilles and password sesame:
$ python -c 'import base64; print(base64.encodebytes(b"jilles\x00jilles\x00sesame"))'
b 'amlsbGVzAGppbGxlcwBzZXNhbWU=\n'
$ kirc -n jilles -a amlsbGVzAGppbGxlcwBzZXNhbWU=
Similar to SASL PLAIN, the SASL EXTERNAL mechanism allows us to authenticate using credentials by external means. An example where this might be required is when trying to connect to an IRC host through Tor. To do so, we can using third-party utilities (e.g. stunnel, socat, ghosttunnel, etc).
An example using socat. Remember to replace items enclosed with <>:
socat TCP4-LISTEN:1110,fork,bind=0,reuseaddr SOCKS4A:127.0.0.1:<onion_address.onion>:<onion_port>,socksport=9050
socat TCP4-LISTEN:1111,fork,bind=0,reuseaddr 'OPENSSL:127.0.0.1:1110,verify=0,cert=<path_to_pem>'
kirc -e -s 127.0.0.1 -p 1111 -n <nick> -x 'wait 5000'
Applying a new color scheme is easy! One of the quickest ways is to use an application, such as kfc, to apply pre-made color palettes. Alternatively, you can manually apply escape sequences to change the default terminal colors.
An example using kfc:
kfc -s gruvbox
An example using ANSI escape sequences:
printf -e "\033]4;<color_number>;#<hex_color_code>"
# Replace <hex_color_code> with the desired Hex code (e.g. #FFFFFF is white).
# Replace <color_number> with the one of the numbers below:
# 0 - Regular Black
# 1 - Regular Red
# 2 - Regular Green
# 3 - Regular Yellow
# 4 - Regular Blue
# 5 - Regular Magenta
# 6 - Regular Cyan
# 7 - Regular White
# 8 - Bright Black
# 9 - Bright Red
# 10 - Bright Green
# 11 - Bright Yellow
# 12 - Bright Blue
# 13 - Bright Magenta
# 14 - Bright Cyan
# 15 - Bright White
The following is an example script that can be used or modified to send custom system notifications to a specified tool (i.e herbe, wayeherb, etc). Also, special thanks to soliwilos contributing this one:
#!/bin/sh
#
# checks log file for substring and sends notification and
# sends message to specified program.
main () {
while true; do
tail -fn5 "$1" | awk '/PRIVMSG #.*nick.*/ {
system("wayherb \"kirc - new message\"")
print "new message recieved!"
exit
}'
sleep 5
done
}
main "$1"
KISS is an acronym for Keep It Simple Stupid, which is a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960s. The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated; therefore, simplicity should be a key goal in design, and unnecessary complexity should be avoided.
POSIX is an acronym for Portable Operating System Interface, which is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. The C99 Standard is preferred over other versions (e.g. C89 or C11) since this currently the only one specified by POSIX.