Advanced IRC Usage

[Timiz0r]

Those that use their own IRC client for connecting to chat gain access to a lot of features not available to normal chat users. Since I've got a lot of extra time on my hands, I'd like to go over some more advanced stuff you might not know about :D

Note that most of the commands I'll be going over may not output to the active window in your IRC client. For mIRC users (which I believe most of you are), most of these commands will output to the status window by default.

HelpOp
The /helpop command is a very useful command this gives help information on most IRC commands, user modes, and channel modes. Using /helpop will first display the different areas of help that can be viewed.

/helpop ?usercmds gives a list of most commands you can use (all but Ustream-custom commands). To view help information on a specific commands, you can use /helpop ?<command>, such as /helpop ?module.

For mods, /helpop ?chmodes gives a list of most channel modes, as well as their descriptions.

General commands
Let's go over some more advanced commands that don't quite deserve their own section in this post!

/ison <nick> is a simple commands that will tell you if a certain user is on. Most people just use the nick list, but this commands is useful if you don't feel like navigating it or if you want to see if someone is just on another channel/stream.

/lusers shows the number of users on the local server you are connected to, the number of users on all servers, the largest recorded number of users, and the number of channels currently created. To view information about a specific server, use /lusers <server>.

/map is a command that gives a list of the actual chat servers, as well as the number of people connected to them. These are the actual servers you truly connect to when you come to chat! You can even connect to many of them directly (but not all of them). This is pretty useful to see what's going on during a netsplit. Also, when I make mention of specifying server, these are the servers I mean :D

/module shows the modules (basically programs that extend IRC functionality) loaded into the server you are connected to. /module <server> can show the modules of a different server. As you can see by using this command, slow mode, pause mode, and censored links are all brought to you by extensions; they do not normally come with chat!

/time shows the local time of the server you are connected to. It also gives the timezone, which you'll find is for the west coast of the United States. If you use the /map command, notice that the servers are prefixed with sjc. These three letters stand for San Jose, California! Or maybe they're lying :D

/watch is a command that will inform you when someone connects to chat/IRC. I won't go into detail because mIRC makes better use of this feature, which I'll cover in a bit. For more information, feel free to check it out in /helpop.

/who is a cool command that allows you to search for users in a variety of ways. There are so many ways that it's probably better to read the /helpop for it. As a quick example, though, /who *tim* searches for all users that have tim in their name.

/version
/version is a cool command that shows various settings of the IRC server. There's far to much information to cover here, but there's a lot off stuff you can figure out by reading over it. The maximum number of channels you can be in is 20. The maximum length of your nickname is 30. The maximum length of a topic is 307.

/whois
/whois <nick> is a command that gives information about a target user. If you use it on someone other than yourself, you'll get information like their address and active channels. If you manage to become a Ustream admin (or an admin on another IRC network), this command will give even more information.

CTCPs
CTCPs (Client to Client Protocol) are special kinds of messages where users can get information from other users. Most IRC clients, even Ustream's chat client, support CTCPs. There are a variety of different CTCPs, including user-defined custom ones, but I'll cover the major ones.

/ctcp <nick> time gets the local time of the target user, including time zone.
/ctcp <nick> version gets the version of the IRC client used.
/ctcp <nick> ping I guess is supposed to get the ping of a user. However, the value returned tends to be pretty useless.

mIRC's notify list
mIRC comes with a useful functionality where you can be automatically informed when someone connects to chat. Most IRC clients have similar functionality, but here are some instructions on using it with mIRC:

Initial setup to be done once
Open the address book by using Alt-B or /abook
Go to the notify tab
Enable notify
Go to options and select Show notifies in active window

Adding users to the notify list
If you are not on the notify tab of the address book, see above
Click add
Choose the target nickname and use Ustream as the network name

These settings will persist even after closing mIRC, so there's no reason to reset everything. Whenever someone connects or disconnects from chat, you will get a message in your active window.

Changing the chat channel of your streaming channel
Just yesterday, I was putting the finishing touches on my streaming setup. With approval (of course), I'd like to be able to restream my recordings whenever the cam goes down for long periods of time. Having to divide the chat between my channel and FFRC's channel was a potential issue because it's better to have everything in one channel.

There's a certain configuration trick you can do to force people away from my chat channel and onto FFRC's channel. The channel mode +l <num> limits the number of people that can be in a channel at one time. The channel mode +L <chan> sets the channel that people will be directed to when that limit is reached. By setting +lL 1 #friends-of-felines-rescue-ce, I was able to get my channel's chat to go over to FFRC's chat. I just had to put a dummy client into the channel in order to satisfy the 1-person limit.

/showlog
One custom command Ustream added is the ability to get the last few messages in a channel. In fact, this is how Ustream's chat client is able to get these messages when you load up the stream page. /showlog <chan> will get the last few messages of the target channel, but these messages will only be displayed in the status window, not the channel window. Also note that the timestamps are for the server's local time, not your local time.

/stats
The /stats command is one of the most powerful commands available. It gives a lot of information about the IRC servers. It gives so much information that we are blocked from viewing a lot of it, but there is still some stuff that isn't blocked that is perfectly fine to look at. Using the /stats command alone will show you all of the information we could potentially view. I'll cover some of the more useful stuff that isn't blocked.

In general, you will use /stats <case-sensitive letter> to view this information on the server you are currently connected to. To view information on a different server, use /stats <letter> <server>.

/stats will show the list of words that are censored. Prepare to shield your eyes, though :D

/stats M will show the information on the commands used on the server. I might be mistaken, but I believe this information disappears when the server goes down (but maybe not :D). The first number is the number of times the command was used. The second number is the amount of data (in bytes) included in these commands. For instance, 28k messages were sent on the server I used this command.

/stats P shows the open IRC-related ports. The default IRC port is 6667, but, as you can see, port 8076 is also open. It's thanks to this I can connect to chat now because my school blocks ports 6667 D: (and I live on-campus).

/stats T shows traffic information of the server. That sure is a lot of data considering IRC is a fairly light-weight protocol :D

/stats u shows the uptime of the server. As you can see, the servers seemed to have gone down Sunday ;D

/stats X shows which servers are currently delinked from the network. I actually forgot this one existed, so I'm not sure about what it looks like when you use it. Since there are no netsplits going on, the list is nice and empty. However, during netsplits it should begin to look funky.


Welp, this is actually the second time I've typed out the entire thing because hitting the preview button lost my all my work. Buuuut I think I covered anything before. I hope there's something in here someone may use one day :D. If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer!

[Kittygard]

I have no idea what IRC is.. but Thanks