epic4 — Internet
Relay Chat client for UNIX like systems
epic4 |
[-a] [-b]
[-B] [-c chan]
[-d] [-f]
[-F] [-h] [-H
hostname] [-l filename] [-L
filename] [-n nickname]
[-o] [-O] [-p
port] [-q] [-v]
[-x] [-z username]
[nickname] [server description
list] |
The ircII/EPIC program is a unix-based
character oriented user agent ('client') to Internet Relay Chat. It is a
fully functional ircII client with many useful extensions. This version
works with all modern irc server classes as of early 1999.
-a- Append the server description list to the default server list. The default
behavior is for the server description list to replace the default server
list.
-b- Operate in so called “bot mode.” This implies the
[-d] option. EPIC will fork(2)
immediately and the parent process will exit, returning you to your shell.
Some system administrators do not look kindly to their users running bots,
and they have disabled this option. Even if your administrator has not
disabled it, you should not assume this gives you automatic permission to
run a bot. If you do run a bot without permission, your administrator may
get very angry with you, and possibly revoke your account. In addition,
most IRC operators on public irc networks have very little tolerance for
people who run bots. So just a word of caution, make sure that your system
administrator and your irc administrator have given you permission before
you run a bot.
-B- Force the startup file to be loaded immediately rather than waiting until
a connection to a server is established.
-c
chan- Join the specified channel the first time you successfully connect to a
server.
-d- Operate in “dumb mode.” The client will not put up a full
screen display, and will read from standard input and write to standard
output. This is useful if the output normally looks awful (because you are
using an incorrect
TERM setting, or your terminal
description is spectacularly broken), or you just don't want to use the
pretty interface. This option will be turned on automatically if your
current TERM setting is not capable of a full
screen display.
-f- Force use of hardware flow control. With this option, the control-S and
control-Q keys are probably not available to be bound to something
else.
-F- Disable use of hardware flow control. With this option, the control-S and
control-Q keys are available to be bound to something else. However, you
will not have hardware flow control.
-h- Display a moderately concise help message and exit immediately.
-H
hostname- Use the IP address of the specified hostname as your default IP address.
This can be used if you have multiple IP addresses on the same machine and
you want to use an address other than the default address. You might need
to use this option when gethostname(3) does not return a
hostname (in some poorly configured NIS environments). The use of multiple
IP addresses on a single machine is commonly referred to as "virtual
hosting", and each IP address is a "virtual host". Please
understand that an irc client may not tell the irc server what your
hostname should be: the server alone determines that. Servers typically
use the canonical hostname for an IP address as your hostname. Because of
this, this option will not permit you to use a CNAME (secondary hostname
for an IP address), because the server will use the canonical hostname
instead. This option overrides the
IRCHOST
environment variable.
-l
filename,[filename]- Use the specified filename(s) as the startup file. The startup file is
loaded the first time you successfully connect to a server, unless you
specify the [-B] option. This overrides the
IRCRC environment variable. If this option is not
specified, and the IRCRC environment variable is
not set, then ~/.ircrc is the default startup
file.
-n
nickname- Use the specified nickname as the default nickname whenever you connect to
an irc server. This option overrides the
IRCNICK
environment variable. This option can be overridden if you specify
nickname argument in the command line (see below).
-o- Force use of IEXTEN termios characters. POSIX systems are allowed to
reserve additional control characters to perform special actions when
IEXTEN is turned on. On 4.4BSD, the control-V and control-O keys are used
by IEXTEN and thus cannot be used in key bindings within EPIC since the
terminal never sends them to EPIC.
-O- Disable use of IEXTEN termios characters. This makes all of the keys
reserved by your system's IEXTEN termios option available to be used in
key bindings. On 4.4BSD, this flag is necessary if you want to use
control-V and control-O in your key bindings.
-p
port- Use the specified port as the default port for new server connections. The
default port is usually 6667. Make sure that the servers you want to
connect to are listening on this port before you try to connect
there.
-q- Suppress the loading of any file when you first establish a connection to
an irc server.
-v- Output version identification (VID) information and exit.
-x- This undocumented feature turns on all of the XDEBUG flags. Refer to the
help files for XDEBUG if you want to know what happens if you use
this.
-z
username- Use the specified username when negotiating a connection to a new irc
server. This overrides the
IRCUSER environment
variable. If this option is not specified, then the user name specified in
/etc/passwd for your user is used. This feature
was formerly undocumented, but with the rise and popularity and use of
identd(8) this option is much less useful than it once
was. Requests to have this option removed will probably be ignored. If you
don't want your users to spoof their usernames, install identd, and do
everyone on IRC a favor.
- nickname
- The first bare word found is taken as the default nickname to use. This
overrides all other options, including the -n option and the
IRCNICK environment variable. If all else fails,
then the client uses your login name as the default nickname.
- server,[server]
- After the nickname, a list of one or more server specifications can be
listed. Unless you specify the -a option, this will replace your default
server list! The -a option forces any servers listed here to be appended
to the default server list. The format for server specifications is:
hostname:port:password:nick
Any item can be omitted by leaving the field blank, and any
trailing colons can also be omitted.
The screen is split into two parts, separated by an inverse-video
status line (if supported). The upper (larger) part of the screen displays
responses from the ircd(8) server. The lower part of the
screen (a single line) accepts keyboard input.
Some terminals do not support certain features required by
epic4 , in which case you receive a message stating
this. If this occurs, try changing the terminal type or run
epic4 with the -d option.
Any line beginning with the slash character “/” is
regarded as an epic4 command (the command character
may be changed). Any line not beginning with this character is treated as a
message to be sent to the current channel. The client has a built in help
system. Install the help files (they should be available at the same place
you got the client) and then type “/help” to open up the help
system.
When epic4 is executed, it checks the
user's home directory for a ~/.ircrc file, executing
the commands in the file. Commands in this file do not need to have a
leading slash character “/” This allows predefinition of
aliases and other features.
Certainly any description of epic4 in this
man page will be sorely inadequate because most of the confusion doesn't
even start until after you get the client to connect to a server. But if you
really have problems getting the client to connect to a server, try some of
these:
epic4- Try this first. This will assume all the defaults. If the person who is
maintaining epic4 at your site has done a halfway decent job, this will
put you on a server that is somewhat local to you.
epic4 nickname irc.domain.com- or something similar will attempt to connect to the irc server running on
the host "irc.domain.com" (fill in a real irc server here) with
the nickname of well, "nickname". This is the most common way to
specify an alternate server to use.
epic4 nickname irc.domain.com:6664- Sometimes, some servers are really busy, and it can take them a long time
to establish a connection with you on the default port (6667). Most major
servers on big public networks accept connections on many different ports,
with the most common being most or all of the ports between 6660 and 6675.
You can usually connect much faster if you use a port other than 6667, if
the server you're connecting to supports an alternate port.
epic4 nickname irc.efnet.net- If you're totally stumped and trying to get on efnet, try this.
epic4 nickname irc.undernet.org- If you're totally stumped and trying to get on undernet, try this.
epic4 nickname irc.dal.net- If you're totally stumped and trying to get on dalnet, try this.
/usr/bin/epic4- the default location of the binary
~/.ircrc- default initialization file
~/.irc/- directory you can put your own
epic4 scripts into,
that can then be loaded with /load
/usr/share/epic4- default directory containing message-of-the-day, master initialization,
help files and
epic4 scripts
Starting up the client is the easy part. Once you get connected,
you'll probably find you have no idea what you're doing. That's where the
help files come in. If the person who maintains irc at your site didn't
install the help files, pester them until they do. Once the help files are
available, use the “/help” command to get started. There are a
bazillion commands and a multitude of nuances that will take a few months to
get down pat. But once you do, you will be so firmly addicted to irc that
your wife will divorce you, your kids will leave you, your dog will run
away, and you'll flunk all your classes, and be left to sing the blues.
<http://www.epicsol.org/> The EPIC
home page
<http://help.epicsol.org/> The
Online EPIC Help Pages
<http://www.irchelp.org/> Lots of
great help for new irc users.
epic4 handles the following signals
gracefully
- SIGUSR1
- Closes all DCC connections and EXEC'd processes.
It can be helpful to predefine certain variables in in the
~/.cshrc , ~/.profile , or
~/.login file:
IRCNICK- The user's default IRC nickname
IRCNAME- The user's default IRC realname (otherwise retrieved from
/etc/passwd )
IRCSERVER- The user's default IRC server list (see server option for details)
HOME- Overrides the default home page in
/etc/password
TERM- The type of terminal emulation to use
Any non-trivial piece of software has bugs. ircII/EPIC is no
exception. You can refer to the KNOWNBUGS file that
is distributed with the client source code for a list of problems that are
known to exist and may or may not be fixed some day. If you find a bug that
is not listed there, you can refer to the BUG_FORM
file that is also distributed with the source code. It will give you
instructions on how to fill out the report and where to send it.
The online documentation probably should be in docbook form rather
than in the current help format. The entire help system is a hack. This
manual page only describes the options to epic4, but doesn't tell you what
to do once you get connected.
Program written by Michael Sandrof (ms5n+@andrew.cmu.edu). The
copyright holder is Matthew Green (mrg@mame.mu.oz.au). This software is
maintained by Jeremy Nelson (jnelson@acronet.net) on behalf of the EPIC
project (list@epicsol.org). At one time or another, this man page has been
edited by Darren Reed, R.P.C. Rodgers, the lynX, Matthew Green, and Jeremy
Nelson.