SmIRC 0.60beta

Connecting to the IRC network

The first step is to connect to an IRC network. Selecting 'Connect to server' from the 'IRC' menu in a channel window opens the following dialog.

NOTE: because SmIRC's appearance can be customized in its the resource file, your mileage may vary, and this illustration may be very different from what you may see.

(picture of the connect dialog)

The server parameters are on the right. The list on the left is a saved list of connections whose parameters have been previously saved. Clicking on the list sets up the parameters of the saved connection. SmIRC comes with a short list of servers. You can add your own to the list. Just put something into 'Connection:' that's not used already, fill in the rest of the stuff, and click 'Ok' to connect to the server. All the connection parameters will be saved under the name entered in the 'Connection' field.

Sorry, there is no 'DELETE CONNECTION' button, just yet. To get rid of a predefined connection, just edit the $HOME/.smirc/config file.

The parameters are as follows:

After filling in all this information, click the CONNECT button. Click CANCEL, instead, to close the dialog window without attempting a connection.

Connecting to a server may take a little while. It is very possible that the server may be busy. If you used a predefined connection for a server that listens on multiple ports, and you saved the port range, just trying that connection again should try a different port on the same server.

Connection is a two-step process. First, the actual network connection must be established to the server. Then, the connection must be registered. This means allocating, and reserving, the nickname to be used for the IRC session. Messages will appear along the way. You can also use the title bar of the server window, as guidance. Normally, it shows the copyright message, but after a connection is established, and registered, the title bar is changed to read "nickname on server" where nickname is the nickname currently used. If the nickname is changed, the title bar will be updated.

If the connection, and registration, succesfully completes, this generally brings about a lot of output from the IRC server - message of the day, welcome message, and other stuff of this nature. If the connection or registration failed, an error message of some sort goes up, and you can try again.