IRC

Ports

Forward the port 6697 from your internet router

IRC is useful for multi-user chat. The classic use case is for software development where many engineers might need to coordinate their activities, but it's also useful for meetings, parties and general socialising.

Installing on Desktop

HexChat (formerly XChat) is compatible with proxying via Tor and so provides the best security when connecting to your IRC server. It will allow you to connect to your IRC server's onion address.

1. Install HexChat and set up its configuration file. Assuming that you're running on a Debian or Arch based distro, this can be done on your local machine with:

git clone https://gitlab.com/bashrc2/libreserver
cd libreserver
git checkout bookworm
sudo make install
libreserver-client --setup hexchat

2. Run HexChat.

3. Within the network list click, Add and enter your domain name then click Edit.

4. Select the entry within the servers box, then enter ircaddress.onion/6697 or mydomainname/6697 and press Enter.

5. Uncheck use global user information.

Enter first and second nicknames and check connect to this network on startup.

7. Use SSL for all servers should be checked.

8. Accept invalid SSL should be checked.

9. Select the Autojoin channels tab, click Add and enter #libreserver as the channel name.

10. Select the Connect Commands tab, click Add and enter:

identify admin yourpassword

Where yourpassword is the password that you use to log into the administrator web interface.

11. Click close and then connect.

Installing in Emacs

If you are an Emacs user then you can also connect to your IRC server via Emacs.

Ensure that tor is installed onto your local system:

sudo apt-get install tor

Add the following to your Emacs configuration file:

(setq socks-noproxy '("localhost"))
(require 'socks)
(require 'tls)
(setq socks-server (list "Tor socks" "localhost" 9050 5))
(setq erc-server-connect-function 'socks-open-network-stream)
(setq erc-autojoin-channels-alist
'(("myircaddress.onion" "#libreserver")))
(erc :server "myircaddress.onion" :port 6697 :nick "yourusername" :password "your IRC password")