How to setup KiwiIRC under Debian 9

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IRC (or Internet Relay Chat) started back in the late 1980's but is so useful that it persists today as a viable means of real-time communications. One of the big advantages is that it has very low overhead (so it will allow people to communicate who have poor internet) and a server can be setup by anyone! Check out my article on How to Setup an UnrealIRCd Server on Debian 9 to learn how to create your own IRC server.

Now if you have your own server you may want your friends to be able to connect to it from anywhere, even if they don't have a stand-alone IRC client installed. This is where KiwiIRC comes it. KiwiIRC is a great browser based IRC client. It can be configured to only connect to a single, specified, IRC server or it can be setup to allow the use to connect to any IRC server. KiwiIRC is open-source and the code can be found on GitHub.

This article is going to help you setup KiwiIRC on your Debian 9 server. KiwiIRC is built to have its own "server" and "client" and we're going to assume that they're on the same machine. We're also going to assume that you only want your users to be able to connect to a single, specified, IRC server.

This is going to be a short one because they made it so easy to install!

Install KiwiIRC

  1. log into your machine with a sudo user
  2. run cd ~ to get to your home folder
  3. visit https://kiwiirc.com/downloads/ to find the latest .deb package. This article is going to assume you're using version 19.04.24-1-1 64-bit.
  4. run wget https://kiwiirc.com/downloads/kiwiirc_19.04.24.1-1_amd64.deb
  5. run sudo dpkg -i kiwiirc_19.04.24.1-1_amd64.deb

Configure the Server

  1. run sudo nano /etc/kiwiirc/config.conf
  2. find the [upstream.1] block and change the settings within to match those of your IRC server

Configure the Client

  1. run sudo nano /etc/kiwiirc/config.conf
  2. find windowTitle and change it to what you want the Tab/Window's title to display as
  3. find restricted and change it to "true"
  4. find theme and change it to the theme you like best
    • you can go test them by visiting http://myserver/, logging in, clicking the gear icon on the upper left, and switching through the Theme drop down
  5. find startOptions and change them to match the server you defined in [upstream.1] in the serve config
    • greetingText is what shows up on the "start screen" of KiwiIRC

And that's it! The creators of KiwiIRC made it pretty darn easy to install and setup!

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