In this series I’m going to cover the basic services available to users. This is not intended as a syntactic reference, just a feature guide. If you need to know how to use a specific command, see the end of this post for details on how to find out.
NickServ is the foundation of all the other services; without it, none of the others will talk to you. It can do the following things:
- Register (and Drop): Registering your nick with NickServ permits you to use the other parts of services. All you need is a password; you can also provide an email if you want, but there is no real need to. Drop unregisters your nick, if for some reason you want to do that.
- Identify: Once you’ve registered, you must issue this command every time you sign on so NickServ knows who you are. Any modern client should have a list of commands to perform when you connect, so just throw this in there.
- Link (and Unlink, and ListLinks): Attach a second nick to your current one, so that they can share permissions and other settings. For example, you may want to link an ‘afk’ variant of your nick. Unlink, surprisingly, cancels this. ListLinks can be used to see what nicks you own.
- Ghost: If you’ve disconnected and your nick is still active, you can tell NickServ to “ghost” your old session, disconnecting it from the network.
- Access: If you’re paranoid about other people jacking your nick, you can use this and some of the settings (below) to only allow certain addresses access to it.
- AJoin: Lets you define and modify a list of channels to automatically join when you identify. It will even invite you past bans/etc if your access in that channel is high enough.
- Info: Displays some basic information about someone’s (registered) nick, like last quit message. Honestly this isn’t really that useful.
- Set: Nickname settings. These include:
- Password: Changes your password.
- Language: Changes the language services uses. I only speak English so I can’t really say if this works well or not, but I’m going to take a wild guess and say “not.”
- URL: Associates a URL with your nick, in case someone actually does an info on you.
- Email: Associates an email address with your nick.
- Info: Other text shown in an info request.
- Secure: If on, someone who takes your takes your nick will not be recognized.
- Kill: If enabled, someone who takes your nick has a period of time (60, 20, or 0 seconds) to identify before NickServ disconnects them from the server.
- Hide: If enabled, some parts of your nick info (specifically, email, last quit and last host) can be hidden from an Info request.
- Timezone: Sets the timezone services uses. Honestly, I have no idea what uses this.
- MainNick: If you have more than one nick linked, this will change which one is the ‘main’ one, which mostly affects which one appears in access lists for channels.
- Private: Claims to hide you from a ‘list’ command, but only services admins (me, toe, twig) can even run that and we can see everything anyway? I don’t really know what this does.
And there we have it! If you need a more detailed explanation, see ‘/ns help [command]‘ for a specific command, or just ‘/ns help commands’ for the whole list. (Some clients (at the least, pidgin and irssi) will require the full form of ‘/msg nickserv’ instead of just ‘ns’).
Next time, ChanServ!
Ok, again tonight around 10PM or so EDT I’m gonna take down irc.boredicons.com for SSL setup now that I think I’ve got a setup that will actually work. Expected downtime is 5-15 minutes. Services will be down during this time as well.
Edit: Ok I lied, probably be Thursday since durd will be down tomorrow.
Edit the second: Will probably be tonight anyway. We’ll see.
irc.durd.net will be offline for some time on Wednesday the 31st at 6PM CET for hardware maintenance.
I will also be taking irc.boredicons.com down for a brief time to enable SSL later tonight but that should hopefully only take a minute and ideally just needs a restart.
If you need to know which server you’re on, just whois yourself.
Update: SSL failed because UnrealIRCd refuses to recompile the commands module with SSL support for some reason. I’ll keep looking into it.
From the IRCd’s own description, here’s all the user modes:
- o = Global IRC Operator
- O = Local IRC Operator
- a = Is a Services Administrator
- A = Is a Server Administrator
- N = Is a Network Administrator
- C = Is a Co Administrator
- d = Makes it so you can not receive channel PRIVMSGs (Deaf)
- g = Can read & send to GlobOps, and LocOps
- h = Available for Help (Help Operator)
- i = Invisible (Not shown in /WHO searches)
- p = Hide all channels in /whois and /who
- q = Only U:lines can kick you (Services Admins/Net Admins only)
- r = Identifies the nick as being Registered (settable by services only)
- s = Can listen to Server notices
- t = Says that you are using a /VHOST
- v = Receive infected DCC send rejection notices
- w = Can listen to Wallop messages
- x = Gives the user Hidden Hostname (security)
- z = Marks the client as being on a Secure Connection (SSL)
- B = Marks you as being a Bot
- G = Filters out all Bad words in your messages with <censored>
- H = Hide IRCop status in /WHO and /WHOIS. (IRC Operators only)
- R = Allows you to only receive PRIVMSGs/NOTICEs from registered (+r) users
- S = For Services only. (Protects them)
- T = Prevents you from receiving CTCPs
- V = Marks the client as a WebTV user
- W = Lets you see when people do a /WHOIS on you (IRC Operators only)
Obviously, +V is the best user mode.
For channels:
- v <nickname> = Gives Voice to the user (May talk if chan is +m)
- h <nickname> = Gives HalfOp status to the user (Limited op access)
- o <nickname> = Gives Operator status to the user
- a <nickname> = Gives Channel Admin to the user
- q <nickname> = Gives Owner status to the user
- b <nick!ident@host> = Bans the nick!ident@host from the channel
- Extended bantypes (for more info see /HELPOP EXTBANS) [h]
- c = Block messages containing mIRC color codes [o]
- e <nick!ident@host> = Overrides a ban for matching users [h]
- I <nick!ident@host> = Overrides +i for matching users [h]
- f <floodparams> = Flood protection (for more info see /HELPOP CHMODEF) [o]
- i = A user must be invited to join the channel [h]
- j <joins:sec> = Throttle joins per-user to ‘joins’ per ‘sec’ seconds [o]
- k <key> = Users must specify <key> to join [h]
- l <number of max users> = Channel may hold at most <number> of users [o]
- m = Moderated channel (only +vhoaq users may speak) [h]
- n = Users outside the channel can not send PRIVMSGs to the channel [h]
- p = Private channel [o]
- r = The channel is registered (settable by services only)
- s = Secret channel [o]
- t = Only +hoaq may change the topic [h]
- z = Only Clients on a Secure Connection (SSL) can join [o]
- A = Server/Net Admin only channel (settable by Admins)
- C = No CTCPs allowed in the channel [o]
- G = Filters out all Bad words in messages with <censored> [o]
- M = Must be using a registered nick (+r), or have voice access to talk [o]
- K = /KNOCK is not allowed [o]
- L <chan2> = Channel link (If +l is full, the next user will auto-join <chan2>) [q]
- N = No Nickname changes are permitted in the channel [o]
- O = IRC Operator only channel (settable by IRCops)
- Q = No kicks allowed [o]
- R = Only registered (+r) users may join the channel [o]
- S = Strips mIRC color codes [o]
- T = No NOTICEs allowed in the channel [o]
- V = /INVITE is not allowed [o]
- u = Auditorium mode (/names and /who #channel only show channel ops) [q]
- [h] requires at least halfop, [o] requires at least chanop, [q] requires owner
to BoredIRC’s BRAND NEW website that someone might even read.
Anyway in the coming days/weeks I plan to add stuff about IRC basics as well as server/network news so that there’s a central repository of this stuff besides “my brain” because you people won’t stop asking me the same questions. Or I’ll get bored in two days. Either one really.
On that note I wholly welcome anyone’s comments on what they’d like to see here especially as far as ‘how to use IRC’ goes.