NAME¶

swirc — curses icb and irc client

SYNOPSIS¶

DESCRIPTION¶

swirc is a BSD licensed, console based and lightweight ICB and IRC client written in C/C++, whose goals are to be portable and secure.

OPTIONS¶

-4

Use IPv4 addresses only

-6

Use IPv6 addresses only

-?

Output help

-C

Do not change color definitions. If the terminal used to run swirc supports >= 256 colors and can_change_color(3) is true swirc uses init_color(3) to initialize the extended IRC color palette. Which may or may not already be set correctly by the terminal. This option is useful in case the terminal look strange after exit, which is possible to fix by simply restarting it.

-P

Permanently disable SASL authentication. If specified, the effect is final (i.e. it overrides any config file value.)

-R

Disable TLS/SSL peer verification

-S

Force TLS (Transport Layer Security)

-W password

Equal effect as flag -p but operates in a non-interactive manner. Be careful if you are using this option on a public computer with multiple other users because the password will then be visible to them in the output of ps(1).

-c server[:port]

Connect to given server. If the port is omitted port 6667 will be chosen. And if the port is 7326 ICB mode is turned on automatically. Further, if the port is 6697 swirc attempts to initiate a TLS/SSL connection.

-d

Debug logging

-i

Turn on Internet Citizen's Band mode

-j join

A comma-separated list of channels to join. For example:

-j libera,linux,c,c++

-n nickname

Online nickname

-p

Server password (for private servers). However: InspIRCd has a module called password forward, which means that if a server password is specified by this flag, it will be used to identify to NickServ. If so: connect with a TLS/SSL connection, i.e. an encrypted connection, to prevent your password from being disclosed in clear text. swirc also supports IRCv3 SASL authentication which is probably a better alternative.

-r rl name

Your real name

-u username

Your username

-v

Output swirc version

-x config

Config file

KEYS¶

CTRL+a

Move to beginning of line

CTRL+e

Move to end of line

CTRL+b

Move cursor backward

CTRL+f

Move cursor forward

CTRL+d

Delete

CTRL+g

Clear readline input. Also useful to trigger terminal resize signal.

CTRL+l

Per window basis toggle logging on/off and works while IRC connected

CTRL+n

Next window

CTRL+p

Previous window

PG UP

Scroll up

PG DOWN

Scroll down

Up arrow

History previous

Down arrow

History next

F2

Spell word

F3

Scroll nicklist up

F4

Scroll nicklist down

F11

Close window

F12

Close all private conversations

INSERTING TEXT-DECORATION¶

F5

Blink

F6

Bold

F7

Color

F8

Normal

F9

Reverse

F10

Underline

MITIGATIONS¶

On OpenBSD pledge(2) is used per default in order to force swirc into a restricted-service operating mode. This since version 1.1. Further, as of 2.3, pledge(2) is used in combination with unveil(2).

FILES¶

~/.swirc/swirc.conf

swirc configuration file

~/.swirc/default.thm

swirc default theme

~/.swirc/log/error.log

swirc error log

SEE ALSO¶

swirc.conf(5), swirc.theme(5)

HISTORY¶

The first version of swirc was released in mid 2016. Starting from Debian 12 (Bookworm) swirc is available for multiple architectures via Debian's official APT repository. And on OpenBSD version 6.7 and greater swirc can be installed by using pkg_add(1).

AUTHORS¶

swirc was written by Markus Uhlin <markus@nifty-networks.net>

BUGS¶

https://github.com/uhlin/swirc/issues

If many errors regarding "In perform_convert_buffer: characters lost: Illegal byte sequence" are present in the error log, then additional encodings for your locale should be installed. See locale(1) for supported character encodings. swirc can handle and are looking for:

• UTF-8
• ISO-8859-1
• ISO-8859-15

Unfortunately some operating systems have decided to only support the UTF-8 character encoding.