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Talk To Me

Talk To Me is an irssi script which executes a command whenever someone sends you a private message or mentions your name in a channel.

It then stores these messages and unless you interact with irssi within a specified number of seconds, it notifies you of them. The idea is that if you're away from the computer and don't notice the first notification (ThinkLight flashing etc.), the second notification will be present when you get back.

Talk To Me supports both local and remote notification. If you're running irssi on your local computer, local notification is sufficient. However if you run irssi on a remote server under screen and SSH (like me), you'll need remote notification. See below for how to set this up.

Requirements

• irssi
• perl
• libnotify, particularly the 'notify-send' utility. On Ubuntu/Debian it is found in the libnotify-bin package.
• flash-thinklight.sh - I use this script as the instant message notification. If you don't have a ThinkPad (with a ThinkLight), use something else

If you plan to use the REMOTE notification method, you'll also need two more scripts:

• notify-remote - Parses commands from stdin and launches the appropriate notify commands.
• notify-remoted - Passes messages from SSH to notify-remote.

Download

• talktome.pl

Installation

Download the script, and place it under ~/.irssi/scripts. Open it in your favorite text editor and have a look at the settings. As previously mentioned, there are two notification methods: local and remote.

Local notification

Use local notification if irssi is running on your local computer. This is pretty self-explanatory - see the comments in the settings. Just update the $ping_cmd and $notify_cmd settings and you're good to go.

Remote notification

If you're running irssi on a remote computer (e.g. under screen), remote notification is for you and requires some more configuration.

First, you need to download the notify-remote and notify-remoted scripts and place them in ~/bin. Then you need to set up RemoteForward under SSH. Open up ~/.ssh/config and add the following:

Host irc
Hostname <irssi-hostname>
User <username>
Port 22
RemoteForward localhost:6666 localhost:6666

Replace <username> with your username and <irssi-hostname> with the host name of the server where your irssi is running. This will forward port 6666 on the server to your local port 6666. Then all you have to do is type ssh irc to log on to the remote server!

When that's done, start up notify-remoted on your local computer. It will start listening on port 6666.

All done! If you'd like to modify the commands that are launched, just edit the notify-remote script to your liking.

[Source]

Once you're done with the notification method...

Finally execute the following in irssi:

/load perl
/script load talktome

You should now receive notifications whenever someone mentions your name! Enjoy!