IRC woes

October 2, 2005 8:35 PM

IRC woes: So all of a sudden, when I try to connect to IRC (using the Mozilla Chatzilla plugin v. 0.9.68.5.1 on OSX) I get the following error message:

=== *** Looking up your hostname...
=== *** Checking Ident
=== *** Found your hostname
=== *** No Ident response
=== *** Notice -- You need to install identd to use this server. If you have ident installed, ensure you are not blocking port 113 via a firewall. Visit our website for additional assistance.

This just started happening tonight; I didn't change any settings or preferences. I don't want to install Ident, whatever the hell that is. It seems sketchy. Is there anything I can do to get me up and chatting again?

posted by Item to computers & internet (6 comments total)

have you visited their website for additional assistance?
posted by jimmy at 8:39 PM on October 2, 2005

Yes. I know little to nothing about IRC. I'm fairly new to it and spend very little time chatting.
posted by Item at 8:42 PM on October 2, 2005

well, i can assure you that it's nothing sinister. read this.
posted by jimmy at 8:51 PM on October 2, 2005

Some IRC servers require identd in a somewhat futiile attempt to discourage nefarious behavior. This may be something that the server administrator turned on. You may not have to install identd, as this page has an ident plugin. If you're firewalled or behind a NAT router that doesn't support ident, you may be out of luck unless you have the ability to open/forward port 113.
posted by zsazsa at 9:07 PM on October 2, 2005

Almost all servers that check ident failover to hostname checking since very (very) few people run identd these days. If it's not asking too much, could you tell us what IRC server this is? I've got quite a bit of experience with IRC and I'd like to check out the problem myself.

It isn't anything sketchy, btw. Just very, very deprecated.
posted by Ryvar at 9:22 PM on October 2, 2005

The IRC program Snak for OS X has a very simple little program that comes with it that will turn identd on and off for you. I've found it much easier to tell people to download that and trash the rest of the program if they don't want it than to try and teach them arcane Terminal commands to deal with it.

The other option is to find another server that doesn't require identd. Depending on what service you're using, there are probably many, many choices. I used to use Undernet a lot back in the day and there were dozens of interrelated servers to try out--if one of them seemed slow or buggy, I would just take it out of the list of servers that my client was attempting to connect to.
posted by bcwinters at 6:12 AM on October 3, 2005