IM-account list maintenance account [<account id>] <action> [<arguments>] Available actions: add, del, list, on, off and set. See help account <action> for more information. account add <protocol> <username> <password> Adds an account on the given server with the specified protocol, username and password to the account list. Supported protocols right now are: Jabber, MSN, OSCAR (AIM/ICQ), Yahoo and Twitter. For more information about adding an account, see help account add <protocol>. account add jabber <handle@server.tld> <password> The handle should be a full handle, including the domain name. You can specify a servername if necessary. Normally BitlBee doesn't need this though, since it's able to find out the server by doing DNS SRV lookups. In previous versions it was also possible to specify port numbers and/or SSL in the server tag. This is deprecated and should now be done using the account set command. This also applies to specifying a resource in the handle (like wilmer@bitlbee.org/work). account add msn <handle@server.tld> <password> For MSN connections there are no special arguments. account add oscar <handle> <password> OSCAR is the protocol used to connect to AIM and/or ICQ. The servers will automatically detect if you're using a numeric or non-numeric username so there's no need to tell which network you want to connect to. account add oscar 72696705 hobbelmeeuw Account successfully added account add twitter <handle> <password> This module gives you simple access to Twitter. Although it uses the Twitter API, only Twitter itself is supported at the moment. By default all your Twitter contacts will come from a contact called twitter_(yourusername). You can change this behaviour using the mode setting (see help set mode). To send tweets yourself, send them to the twitter_(yourusername) contact, or just write in the groupchat channel if you enabled that option. Since Twitter now requires OAuth authentication, you should not enter your Twitter password into BitlBee. Just type a bogus password. The first time you log in, BitlBee will start OAuth authentication. (See help set oauth.) account add yahoo <handle> <password> For Yahoo! connections there are no special arguments. account <account id> del This commands deletes an account from your account list. You should signoff the account before deleting it. The account ID can be a number (see account list), the protocol name or (part of) the screenname, as long as it matches only one connection. account [<account id>] on This command will try to log into the specified account. If no account is specified, BitlBee will log into all the accounts that have the auto_connect flag set. The account ID can be a number (see account list), the protocol name or (part of) the screenname, as long as it matches only one connection. account [<account id>] off This command disconnects the connection for the specified account. If no account is specified, BitlBee will deactivate all active accounts and cancel all pending reconnects. The account ID can be a number (see account list), the protocol name or (part of) the screenname, as long as it matches only one connection. account list This command gives you a list of all the accounts known by BitlBee. account <account id> set account <account id> set <setting> account <account id> set <setting> <value> account <account id> set -del <setting> This command can be used to change various settings for IM accounts. For all protocols, this command can be used to change the handle or the password BitlBee uses to log in and if it should be logged in automatically. Some protocols have additional settings. You can see the settings available for a connection by typing account <account id> set. For more infomation about a setting, see help set <setting>. The account ID can be a number (see account list), the protocol name or (part of) the screenname, as long as it matches only one connection. Channel list maintenance channel [<account id>] <action> [<arguments>] Available actions: del, list, set. See help chat <action> for more information. There is no channel add command. To create a new channel, just use the IRC /join command. See also help channels and help groupchats. channel <channel id> del Remove a channel and forget all its settings. You can only remove channels you're not currently in, and can't remove the main control channel. (You can, however, leave it.) channel list This command gives you a list of all the channels you configured. channel <channel id> set channel <channel id> set <setting> channel <channel id> set <setting> <value> channel <channel id> set -del <setting> This command can be used to change various settings for channels. Different channel types support different settings. You can see the settings available for a channel by typing channel <channel id> set. For more infomation about a setting, see help set <setting>. The channel ID can be a number (see channel list), or (part of) its name, as long as it matches only one channel. Chatroom list maintenance chat <action> [<arguments>] Available actions: add, with. See help chat <action> for more information. chat add <account> <room> [<channel>] Add a chatroom to the list of chatrooms you're interested in. BitlBee needs this list to map room names to a proper IRC channel name. After adding a room to your list, you can simply use the IRC /join command to enter the room. Also, you can tell BitlBee to automatically join the room when you log in. (See chat set) Password-protected rooms work exactly like on IRC, by passing the password as an extra argument to /join. chat with <nickname> While most chat subcommands are about named chatrooms, this command can be used to open an unnamed groupchat with one or more persons. This command is what /join #nickname used to do in older BitlBee versions. Add a buddy to your contact list add <connection> <handle> [<nick>] add -tmp <connection> <handle> [<nick>] Adds the given buddy at the specified connection to your buddy list. The account ID can be a number (see account list), the protocol name or (part of) the screenname, as long as it matches only one connection. If you want, you can also tell BitlBee what nick to give the new contact. The -tmp option adds the buddy to the internal BitlBee structures only, not to the real contact list (like done by set handle_unknown add). This allows you to talk to people who are not in your contact list. This normally won't show you any presence notifications. add 3 gryp@jabber.org grijp has joined &bitlbee Request user information info <connection> <handle> info <nick> Requests IM-network-specific information about the specified user. The amount of information you'll get differs per protocol. For some protocols (ATM Yahoo! and MSN) it'll give you an URL which you can visit with a normal web browser to get the information. info 0 72696705 User info - UIN: 72696705 Nick: Lintux First/Last name: Wilmer van der Gaast E-mail: lintux@lintux.cx Remove a buddy from your contact list remove <nick> Removes the specified nick from your buddy list. remove gryp has quit [Leaving...] Block someone block <nick> block <connection> <handle> block <connection> Puts the specified user on your ignore list. Either specify the user's nick when you have him/her in your contact list or a connection number and a user handle. When called with only a connection specification as an argument, the command displays the current block list for that connection. Unblock someone allow <nick> allow <connection> <handle> Reverse of block. Unignores the specified user or user handle on specified connection. When called with only a connection specification as an argument, the command displays the current allow list for that connection. Miscellaneous settings set set <variable> set <variable> <value> set -del <variable> Without any arguments, this command lists all the set variables. You can also specify a single argument, a variable name, to get that variable's value. To change this value, specify the new value as the second argument. With -del you can reset a setting to its default value. To get more help information about a setting, try: help set private BitlBee help system help [subject] This command gives you the help information you're reading right now. If you don't give any arguments, it'll give a short help index. Save your account data save This command saves all your nicks and accounts immediately. Handy if you have the autosave functionality disabled, or if you don't trust the program's stability... ;-) For control channels with fill_by set to account: Set this setting to the account id (numeric, or part of the username) of the account containing the contacts you want to see in this channel. true When you're already connected to a BitlBee server and you connect (and identify) again, BitlBee will offer to migrate your existing session to the new connection. If for whatever reason you don't want this, you can disable this setting. true With this option enabled, when you identify BitlBee will automatically connect to your accounts, with this disabled it will not do this. This setting can also be changed for specific accounts using the account set command. (However, these values will be ignored if the global auto_connect setting is disabled!) false With this option enabled, BitlBee will automatically join this channel when you log in. true If an IM-connections breaks, you're supposed to bring it back up yourself. Having BitlBee do this automatically might not always be a good idea, for several reasons. If you want the connections to be restored automatically, you can enable this setting. See also the auto_reconnect_delay setting. This setting can also be changed for specific accounts using the account set command. (However, these values will be ignored if the global auto_reconnect setting is disabled!) 5*3<900 Tell BitlBee after how many seconds it should attempt to bring a broken IM-connection back up. This can be one integer, for a constant delay. One can also set it to something like "10*10", which means wait for ten seconds on the first reconnect, multiply it by ten on every failure. Once successfully connected, this delay is re-set to the initial value. With < you can give a maximum delay. See also the auto_reconnect setting. To mark yourself as away, it is recommended to just use /away, like on normal IRC networks. If you want to mark yourself as away on only one IM network, you can use this per-account setting. You can set it to any value and BitlBee will try to map it to the most appropriate away state for every open IM connection, or set it as a free-form away message where possible. Any per-account away setting will override globally set away states. To un-set the setting, use set -del away. true With this option enabled, the root user devoices people when they go away (just away, not offline) and gives the voice back when they come back. You might dislike the voice-floods you'll get if your contact list is huge, so this option can be disabled. 3600 Most IRC servers send a user's away message every time s/he gets a private message, to inform the sender that they may not get a response immediately. With this setting set to 0, BitlBee will also behave like this. Since not all IRC clients do an excellent job at suppressing these messages, this setting lets BitlBee do it instead. BitlBee will wait this many seconds (or until the away state/message changes) before re-informing you that the person's away. utf-8 you can get a list of all possible values by doing 'iconv -l' in a shell This setting tells BitlBee what your IRC client sends and expects. It should be equal to the charset setting of your IRC client if you want to be able to send and receive non-ASCII text properly. Most systems use UTF-8 these days. On older systems, an iso8859 charset may work better. For example, iso8859-1 is the best choice for most Western countries. You can try to find what works best for you on http://www.unicodecharacter.com/charsets/iso8859.html &bitlbee Normally the control channel where you can see all your contacts is called "&bitlbee". If you don't like this name, you can rename it to anything else using the rename command, or by changing this setting. groupchat groupchat, room There are two kinds of chat channels: simple groupchats (basically normal IM chats with more than two participants) and names chatrooms, more similar to IRC channels. BitlBee supports both types. With this setting set to groupchat (the default), you can just invite people into the room and start talking. For setting up named chatrooms, it's currently easier to just use the chat add command. false Some debugging messages can be sent to the control channel if you wish. They're probably not really useful for you, unless you're doing some development on BitlBee. root root, last With this value set to root, lines written in the control channel without any nickname in front of them will be interpreted as commands. If you want BitlBee to send those lines to the last person you addressed in the control channel, set this to last. Currently only available for MSN connections. This setting allows you to read and change your "friendly name" for this connection. Since this is a server-side setting, it can't be changed when the account is off-line. false With this option enabled, root will inform you when someone in your buddy list changes his/her "friendly name". true When incoming messages are old (i.e. offline messages and channel backlogs), BitlBee will prepend them with a timestamp. If you find them ugly or useless, you can use this setting to hide them. all all, group, account, protocol For control channels only: This setting determines which contacts the channel gets populated with. By default, control channels will contain all your contacts. You instead select contacts by buddy group, IM account or IM protocol. Change this setting and the corresponding account/group/protocol setting to set up this selection. Note that, when creating a new channel, BitlBee will try to preconfigure the channel for you, based on the channel name. See help channels. For control channels with fill_by set to group: Set this setting to the name of the group containing the contacts you want to see in this channel. add_channel root, add, add_private, add_channel, ignore Messages from unknown users are echoed like this by default: Unknown message from handle 3137137: j0000! 1 4m l33t h4x0r! kill me! If you want this lame user to be added automatically, you can set this setting to "add". If you prefer to ignore messages from people you don't know, you can set this one to "ignore". "add_private" and "add_channel" are like add, but you can use them to make messages from unknown buddies appear in the channel instead of a query window. Auto-added users aren't added to your real contact list. This is because you don't want the user to get authorization requests. So when you restart BitlBee, the auto-added user will be gone. If you want to keep the person in your buddy-list, you have to fixate the add using the add command. false Only supported by OSCAR so far, you can use this setting to ignore ICQ authorization requests, which are hardly used for legitimate (i.e. non-spam) reasons anymore. true Hereby you can change whether you want all lower case nick names or leave the case as it intended by your peer. false Mostly meant to work around a bug in MSN servers (forgetting the display name set by the user), this setting tells BitlBee to store your display name locally and set this name on the MSN servers when connecting. false Some protocols (MSN, Yahoo!) can notify via IM about new e-mail. Since most people use their Hotmail/Yahoo! addresses as a spam-box, this is disabled default. If you want these notifications, you can enable this setting. 140 Since Twitter rejects messages longer than 140 characters, BitlBee can count message length and emit a warning instead of waiting for Twitter to reject it. You can change this limit here but this won't disable length checks on Twitter's side. You can also set it to 0 to disable the check in case you believe BitlBee doesn't count the characters correctly. one, many, chat one By default, everything from the Twitter module will come from one nick, twitter_(yourusername). If you prefer to have individual nicks for everyone, you can set this setting to "many" instead. If you prefer to have all your Twitter things in a separate channel, you can set this setting to "chat". In the last two modes, you can send direct messages by /msg'ing your contacts directly. Note, however, that incoming DMs are not fetched yet. You can use this option to set your nickname in a chatroom. You won't see this nickname yourself, but other people in the room will. By default, BitlBee will use your username as the chatroom nickname. %-@nick By default, BitlBee tries to derive sensible nicknames for all your contacts from their IM handles. In some cases, IM modules (ICQ for example) will provide a nickname suggestion, which will then be used instead. This setting lets you change this behaviour. Whenever this setting is set for an account, it will be used for all its contacts. If it's not set, the global value will be used. It's easier to describe this setting using a few examples: FB-%full_name will make all nicknames start with "FB-", followed by the person's full name. For example you can set this format for your Facebook account so all Facebook contacts are clearly marked. [%group]%-@nick will make all nicknames start with the group the contact is in between square brackets, followed by the nickname suggestions from the IM module if available, or otherwise the handle. Because of the "-@" part, everything from the first @ will be stripped. See help nick_format for more information. handle handle, full_name, first_name By default, BitlBee generates a nickname for every contact by taking its handle and chopping off everything after the @. In some cases, this gives very inconvenient nicknames. The Facebook XMPP server is a good example, as all Facebook XMPP handles are numeric. With this setting set to full_name, the person's full name is used to generate a nickname. Or if you don't like long nicknames, set this setting to first_name instead and only the first word will be used. Note that the full name can be full of non-ASCII characters which will be stripped off. true This enables OAuth authentication for Twitter accounts. From June 2010 this will be mandatory. With OAuth enabled, you shouldn't tell BitlBee your Twitter password. Just add your account with a bogus password and type account on. BitlBee will then give you a URL to authenticate with Twitter. If this succeeds, Twitter will return a PIN code which you can give back to BitlBee to finish the process. The resulting access token will be saved permanently, so you have to do this only once. both both, root, user, none Some people prefer themself and root to have operator status in &bitlbee, other people don't. You can change these states using this setting. The value "both" means both user and root get ops. "root" means, well, just root. "user" means just the user. "none" means nobody will get operator status. Use this global setting to change your "NickServ" password. This setting is also available for all IM accounts to change the password BitlBee uses to connect to the service. Note that BitlBee will always say this setting is empty. This doesn't mean there is no password, it just means that, for security reasons, BitlBee stores passwords somewhere else so they can't just be retrieved in plain text. false By default, when you send a message to someone, BitlBee forwards this message to the user immediately. When you paste a large number of lines, the lines will be sent in separate messages, which might not be very nice to read. If you enable this setting, BitlBee will buffer your messages and wait for more data. Using the paste_buffer_delay setting you can specify the number of seconds BitlBee should wait for more data before the complete message is sent. Please note that if you remove a buddy from your list (or if the connection to that user drops) and there's still data in the buffer, this data will be lost. BitlBee will not try to send the message to the user in those cases. 200 Tell BitlBee after how many (mili)seconds a buffered message should be sent. Values greater than 5 will be interpreted as miliseconds, 5 and lower as seconds. See also the paste_buffer setting. Currently only available for Jabber connections. Specifies the port number to connect to. Usually this should be set to 5222, or 5223 for SSL-connections. 0 Can be set for Jabber connections. When connecting to one account from multiple places, this priority value will help the server to determine where to deliver incoming messages (that aren't addressed to a specific resource already). According to RFC 3921 servers will always deliver messages to the server with the highest priority value. Mmessages will not be delivered to resources with a negative priority setting (and should be saved as an off-line message if all available resources have a negative priority value). true If value is true, messages from users will appear in separate query windows. If false, messages from users will appear in the control channel. This setting is remembered (during one session) per-user, this setting only changes the default state. This option takes effect as soon as you reconnect. For control channels with fill_by set to protocol: Set this setting to the name of the IM protocol of all contacts you want to see in this channel. lifo lifo, fifo This changes the order in which the questions from root (usually authorization requests from buddies) should be answered. When set to lifo, BitlBee immediately displays all new questions and they should be answered in reverse order. When this is set to fifo, BitlBee displays the first question which comes in and caches all the others until you answer the first one. Although the fifo setting might sound more logical (and used to be the default behaviour in older BitlBee versions), it turned out not to be very convenient for many users when they missed the first question (and never received the next ones). BitlBee Can be set for Jabber connections. You can use this to connect to your Jabber account from multiple clients at once, with every client using a different resource string. activity priority, activity Because the IRC interface makes it pretty hard to specify the resource to talk to (when a buddy is online through different resources), this setting was added. Normally it's set to priority which means messages will always be delivered to the buddy's resource with the highest priority. If the setting is set to activity, messages will be delivered to the resource that was last used to send you a message (or the resource that most recently connected). root Normally the "bot" that takes all your BitlBee commands is called "root". If you don't like this name, you can rename it to anything else using the rename command, or by changing this setting. true If enabled causes BitlBee to save all current settings and account details when user disconnects. This is enabled by default, and these days there's not really a reason to have it disabled anymore. Can be set for Jabber- and OSCAR-connections. For Jabber, you might have to set this if the servername isn't equal to the part after the @ in the Jabber handle. For OSCAR this shouldn't be necessary anymore in recent BitlBee versions. false If enabled causes BitlBee to also show offline users in Channel. Online-users will get op, away-users voice and offline users none of both. This option takes effect as soon as you reconnect. true Some IRC clients parse quit messages sent by the IRC server to see if someone really left or just disappeared because of a netsplit. By default, BitlBee tries to simulate netsplit-like quit messages to keep the control channel window clean. If you don't like this (or if your IRC client doesn't support this) you can disable this setting. false Currently only available for Jabber connections. Set this to true if the server accepts SSL connections. Certain protocols (like Jabber/XMPP) support status messages, similar to away messages. They can be used to indicate things like your location or activity, without showing up as away/busy. This setting can be used to set such a message. It will be available as a per-account setting for protocols that support it, and also as a global setting (which will then automatically be used for all protocols that support it). Away states set using /away or the away setting will override this setting. To un-set the setting, use set -del status. true Determines what BitlBee should do with HTML in messages. Normally this is turned on and HTML will be stripped from messages, if BitlBee thinks there is HTML. If BitlBee fails to detect this sometimes (most likely in AIM messages over an ICQ connection), you can set this setting to always, but this might sometimes accidentally strip non-HTML things too. false Turn on this flag if you have difficulties talking to offline/invisible contacts. With this setting enabled, BitlBee will send keepalives to MSN switchboards with offline/invisible contacts every twenty seconds. This should keep the server and client on the other side from shutting it down. This is useful because BitlBee doesn't support MSN offline messages yet and the MSN servers won't let the user reopen switchboards to offline users. Once offline messaging is supported, this flag might be removed. local local, utc, gmt, timezone-spec If message timestamps are available for offline messages or chatroom backlogs, BitlBee will display them as part of the message. By default it will use the local timezone. If you're not in the same timezone as the BitlBee server, you can adjust the timestamps using this setting. Values local/utc/gmt should be self-explanatory. timezone-spec is a time offset in hours:minutes, for example: -8 for Pacific Standard Time, +2 for Central European Summer Time, +5:30 for Indian Standard Time. try Newer Jabber servers allow clients to convert a plain-text session to a TLS/SSL-encrypted session. Normally (with this setting set to try) BitlBee will do this, if possible. If you want to force BitlBee to use TLS sessions only (and to give up if that doesn't seem to be possible) you can set this setting to true. Set it to false if you want the session to remain plain-text. ": " It's customary that messages meant for one specific person on an IRC channel are prepended by his/her alias followed by a colon ':'. BitlBee does this by default. If you prefer a different character, you can set it using set to_char. Please note that this setting is only used for incoming messages. For outgoing messages you can use ':' (colon) or ',' to separate the destination nick from the message, and this is not configurable. true IRC's nickname namespace is quite limited compared to most IM protocols. Not any non-ASCII characters are allowed, in fact nicknames have to be mostly alpha-numeric. Also, BitlBee has to add underscores sometimes to avoid nickname collisions. While normally the BitlBee user is the only one seeing these names, they may be exposed to other chatroom participants for example when addressing someone in the channel (with or without tab completion). By default BitlBee will translate these stripped nicknames back to the original nick. If you don't want this, disable this setting. control control, chat BitlBee supports two kinds of channels: control channels (usually with a name starting with a &) and chatroom channels (name usually starts with a #). See help channels for a full description of channel types in BitlBee. false Sends you a /notice when a user starts typing a message (if supported by the IM protocol and the user's client). To use this, you most likely want to use a script in your IRC client to show this information in a more sensible way. BitlBee Some Jabber servers are configured to only allow a few (or even just one) kinds of XMPP clients to connect to them. You can change this setting to make BitlBee present itself as a different client, so that you can still connect to these servers. false ICQ allows people to see if you're on-line via a CGI-script. (http://status.icq.com/online.gif?icq=UIN) This can be nice to put on your website, but it seems that spammers also use it to see if you're online without having to add you to their contact list. So to prevent ICQ spamming, recent versions of BitlBee disable this feature by default. Unless you really intend to use this feature somewhere (on forums or maybe a website), it's probably better to keep this setting disabled. false The Jabber module allows you to add a buddy xmlconsole to your contact list, which will then show you the raw XMPP stream between you and the server. You can also send XMPP packets to this buddy, which will then be sent to the server. If you want to enable this XML console permanently (and at login time already), you can set this setting. Rename (renick) a buddy rename <oldnick> <newnick> Renick a user in your buddy list. Very useful, in fact just very important, if you got a lot of people with stupid account names (or hard ICQ numbers). rename itsme_ you is now known as you Accept a request yes [<number>] Sometimes an IM-module might want to ask you a question. (Accept this user as your buddy or not?) To accept a question, use the yes command. By default, this answers the first unanswered question. You can also specify a different question as an argument. You can use the qlist command for a list of questions. Deny a request no [<number>] Sometimes an IM-module might want to ask you a question. (Accept this user as your buddy or not?) To reject a question, use the no command. By default, this answers the first unanswered question. You can also specify a different question as an argument. You can use the qlist command for a list of questions. List all the unanswered questions root asked qlist This gives you a list of all the unanswered questions from root. Register yourself register <password> BitlBee can save your settings so you won't have to enter all your IM passwords every time you log in. If you want the Bee to save your settings, use the register command. Please do pick a secure password, don't just use your nick as your password. Please note that IRC is not an encrypted protocol, so the passwords still go over the network in plaintext. Evil people with evil sniffers will read it all. (So don't use your root password.. ;-) To identify yourself in later sessions, you can use the identify command. To change your password later, you can use the set password command. identify [-noload|-force] <password> Identify yourself with your password BitlBee saves all your settings (contacts, accounts, passwords) on-server. To prevent other users from just logging in as you and getting this information, you'll have to identify yourself with your password. You can register this password using the register command. Once you're registered, you can change your password using set password <password>. The -noload and -force flags can be used to identify when you're logged into some IM accounts already. -force will let you identify yourself and load all saved accounts (and keep the accounts you're logged into already). -noload will log you in but not load any accounts and settings saved under your current nickname. These will be overwritten once you save your settings (i.e. when you disconnect). drop <password> Drop your account Drop your BitlBee registration. Your account files will be removed and your password will be forgotten. For obvious security reasons, you have to specify your NickServ password to make this command work. blist [all|online|offline|away] List all the buddies in your contact list You can get a better readable buddy list using the blist command. If you want a complete list (including the offline users) you can use the all argument. Change friendly name, nick nick <connection> [<new nick>] nick <connection> Deprecated: Use the per-account display_name setting to read and change this information. account 1 set display_name "The majestik møøse" display_name = `The majestik møøse' Monitor, cancel, or reject file transfers transfers [<cancel> id | <reject>] Without parameters the currently pending file transfers and their status will be listed. Available actions are cancel and reject. See help transfers <action> for more information. transfers Cancels the file transfer with the given id transfers <cancel> id Cancels the file transfer with the given id transfers cancel 1 Canceling file transfer for test Rejects all incoming transfers transfers <reject> Rejects all incoming (not already transferring) file transfers. Since you probably have only one incoming transfer at a time, no id is neccessary. Or is it? transfers reject