IM-account list maintenance account <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) and Yahoo. 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 yahoo <handle> <password> For Yahoo! connections there are no special arguments. account del <account id> 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 on [<account id>] 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 off [<account id>] 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, including the numbers you'll need for most account commands. account set <account id> account set <account id>/<setting> account set <account id>/<setting> <value> account set -del <account id>/<setting> This account 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 set <account id>. For more infomation about a setting, see help set <setting>. For details about the syntax of this command, see help 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. 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. Of course you can also use the rename command for that, but sometimes this might be more convenient. Adding -tmp 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. 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. Off-the-Record encryption control otr <subcommand> [<arguments>] Available subcommands: connect, disconnect, smp, trust, info, keygen, and forget. See help otr <subcommand> for more information. otr connect <nick> Attempts to establish an encrypted connection with the specified user by sending a magic string. otr disconnect <nick> Resets the connection with the specified user to cleartext. otr smp <nick> <secret> Attempts to authenticate the given user's active fingerprint via the Socialist Millionaires' Protocol. If an SMP challenge has already been received from the given user, responds with the specified secret. Otherwise, a challenge for the secret will be sent. If the protocol succeeds (i.e. both parties gave the same secret), the fingerprint will be trusted. otr trust <nick> <fp1> <fp2> <fp3> <fp4> <fp5> Manually affirms trust in the specified fingerprint, given as five blocks of precisely eight (hexadecimal) digits each. otr info otr info <nick> Shows information about the OTR state. The first form lists our private keys and current OTR contexts. The second form displays information about the connection with a given user, including the list of their known fingerprints. otr keygen <account-no> Generates a new OTR private key for the given account. otr forget <thing> <arguments> Forgets some part of our OTR userstate. Available things: fingerprint and context. See help otr forget <thing> for more information. otr forget fingerprint <nick> <fingerprint> Drops the specified fingerprint from the given user's OTR connection context. It is allowed to specify only a (unique) prefix of the desired fingerprint. otr forget context <nick> Forgets the entire OTR context associated with the given user. This includes current message and protocol states, as well as any fingerprints for that user. 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... ;-) 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 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!) 300 Tell BitlBee after how many seconds it should attempt to bring an IM-connection back up after a crash. It's not a good idea to set this value very low, it will cause too much useless traffic when an IM-server is down for a few hours. See also the auto_reconnect setting. 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. 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 buddy_sendbuffer_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 buddy_sendbuffer setting. iso8859-1 you can get a list of all possible values by doing 'iconv -l' in a shell The charset setting enables you to use different character sets in BitlBee. These get converted to UTF-8 before sending and from UTF-8 when receiving. If you don't know what's the best value for this, at least iso8859-1 is the best choice for most Western countries. You can try to find what works best for you on http://czyborra.com/charsets/iso8859.html true If set to true, BitlBee will color incoming encrypted messages according to their fingerprint trust level: untrusted=red, trusted=green. 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". root 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. encrypted encrypted, trusted, notaway, false Specifies under which circumstances BitlBee should give the "halfop" mode flag (+h) to buddies. If "false", the flag is never set. On "notaway", the flag is removed for users marked as "away" and set for all others. On "encrypted", the flag is set for users with whom we have an encrypted connection. On "trusted", it is set only for encrypted connections using a trusted key. true Hereby you can change whether you want all lower case nick names or leave the case as it intended by your peer. 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. trusted encrypted, trusted, notaway, false Specifies under which circumstances BitlBee should give the "op" mode flag (+o) to buddies. If "false", the flag is never set. On "notaway", the flag is removed for users marked as "away" and set for all others. On "encrypted", the flag is set for users with whom we have an encrypted connection. On "trusted", it is set only for encrypted connections using a trusted key. true Some people prefer themself and root to have operator status in &bitlbee, other people don't. You can set the desired state for root using this setting. true Some people prefer themself and root to have operator status in &bitlbee, other people don't. You can set the desired state for yourself using this setting. opportunistic never, opportunistic, manual, always This setting controls the policy for establishing Off-the-Record connections. A value of "never" effectively disables the OTR subsystem. In "opportunistic" mode, a magic whitespace pattern will be appended to the first message sent to any user. If the peer is also running opportunistic OTR, an encrypted connection will be set up automatically. On "manual", on the other hand, OTR connections must be established explicitly using otr connect. Finally, the setting "always" enforces encrypted communication by causing BitlBee to refuse to send any cleartext messages at all. 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. 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. 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. priority priority, time 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 time, messages will be delivered to the resource that was last used to send you a message (or the resource that most recently connected). 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. 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. 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. 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. false Sends you a /notice when a user starts typing a message (if the protocol supports it, MSN for example). This is a bug, not a feature. (But please don't report it.. ;-) You don't want to use it. Really. In fact the typing-notification is just one of the least useful 'innovations' ever. It's just there because some guy will probably ask me about it anyway. ;-) trusted encrypted, trusted, notaway, false Specifies under which circumstances BitlBee should give the "voice" mode flag (+v) to buddies. If "false", the flag is never set. On "notaway", the flag is removed for users marked as "away" and set for all others. On "encrypted", the flag is set for users with whom we have an encrypted connection. On "trusted", it is set only for encrypted connections using a trusted key. 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 <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>. 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 This command allows to set the friendly name of an im account. If no new name is specified the command will report the current name. When the name contains spaces, don't forget to quote the whole nick in double quotes. Currently this command is only supported by the MSN protocol. It is recommended to use the per-account display_name setting to read and change this information. The nick command is deprecated. nick 1 "Wouter Paesen" Setting your name on connection 1 to `Wouter Paesen' Join a named groupchat/conference room join_chat <connection> <room name> [<channel name>] [<room nickname>] [<password>] On most IM-networks groupchats can be started using the /join command. (/join #foo to start a chatroom with you and foo) This doesn't work with names groupchats though (which exist on Jabber networks and AIM, for example), instead you can use this command. The first two arguments are required. room name is the name of the chatroom on the IM-network. channel name is the IRC channel name BitlBee should map this to. room nickname is the nickname you want to have in this channel. If you don't give these options, BitlBee will do the right guesses. The following command will join you to the chatroom called bitlbee@conference.bitlbee.org. The channel will be called &bitlbee-help because &bitlbee will already be in use. Your nickname will be help-me. join_chat jabber bitlbee@conference.bitlbee.org &bitlbee-help help-me