READ THIS TOO: http://www.irssi.org/documentation/startup#c3

Step 1: The Final Solution

Since you’ve probably configured irssi incorrectly, the first thing you should do is log into your shell on whatever server you’re using screen+irssi from and do:

rm -rf ~/.irssi

What this will do is blow away any crappy settings you’ve got going. Since whoever configured your irssi probably didn’t care to do a good job on your instance, this is probably best.

Step 2: Configure irssi

Start irssi:

irssi

At the nice clean irssi window, type the following commands:

/network add VoidNet
/server add -auto -network VoidNet irc.easymac.org
/channel add -auto #VoidNet VoidNet [password]
/save
/quit

If you’re not an idiot you can probably figure that if the channel doesn’t have a password, you don’t need to specify the [password] part. If it does, then… well… you get the idea.

Step 3: Start, Name, Attach, and Detach Your Screen

The only functions you really need to know are screen creation, screen detaching, and screen attaching. They’re quite simple, but for some reason people who don’t know how to use screen like to create screens where they should be attaching existing screens.

So, the first thing you need to do is learn what screens are running!

screen -ls

If you see something like:

screen -ls
No Sockets found in /tmp/screens/S-username.

You’re in good shape. Otherwise, the action necessary is out of the scope of this document. Have fun.

Continuing on…. Let’s start a new screen, named IRC for the purpose of…. IRC!

screen -S irc irssi

OMG irssi is now running inside a screen named irc, wonderful!

To detach, but leave the screen running you need to do a keystroke. (ctrl+shift+a,d)

To reattach the screen simply do:

screen -rd irc

Yay, your irssi is good!

Step 4: Starting irssi At Server Reboot

You don’t NEED to do this step, but there’s nothing more annoying then when irssi isn’t started because the admin was a jerk and rebooted the server. So if you want to avoid that annoyance, it’s quite simple to do.

Edit your crontab using:

crontab -e

and insert this line:

@reboot     screen -d -m -S irc irssi