[ubuntu-uk] VPS hosts

[Dave Walker]

On Fri, 2007-08-17 at 10:23 +0100, Matthew East wrote:
> On 17/08/07, Dave Walker <DaveWalker at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > On the whole, my dreamhost experience has been good and I
> > have been able to run IRSSI+screen (Console IRC Client) without any
> > problems.
> 
> How do you do that? I haven't been able to install irssi... I'd love
> to know how you did it. Fancy posting a guide? :)
> 
> -- 
> Matthew East
> http://www.mdke.org
> gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF
> 

Firstly I changed some of environmental variables to make the experience
a tad nicer:

* Change the Timezone to UK
* Add a ~/bin/ to PATH
* Change the prompt to add colours and include the present working
directory (not required, but i prefer it)

$ cat .bash_profile 
# ~/.bash_profile: executed by bash(1) for login shells.

umask 002
export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH:.
export TZ='Europe/London';
#PS1='[\h]$ '
PS1='\[\033[01;32m\]\h \[\033[01;34m\]${PWD##*/} \$ \[\033[00m\]'
export PS1

Then i simply extracted the irssi executable from either a deb or tar, I
can't remember.  To make things easier you can just use mine :)

$ mkdir bin
$ cd bin
$ wget http://daviey.mooo.com/irssi
$ chmod +x irssi

Done..

Now launch:
$ screen
$ irssi

When you launch irssi, use '/save' to create a settings file that will
allow you to edit afterwards.

To make connecting easier I use this script:
$ cat /usr/local/bin/irc
#!/bin/sh
echo -e "\e[1;32;40m"
clear
echo " "
echo "Now connecting to IRC, please wait..."
ssh -t username at your_dreamhost_domain "screen -d -r"

This allows, just "irc" to be typed in my shell to be reconnected to the
irssi+screen session.  If you use key based authentication, it won't
even require a password.

Key Based Authentication:

# On local machine upload the key (If you already have one)
$ scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub username at your_dreamhost_domain:~/

# ssh back to dreamhost
$ mkdir .ssh
$ cat id_dsa.pub >> .ssh/authorized_keys # append your key

Now when you SSH to your dreamhost box it will not ask for a password, so the IRC shell script should 'just work'TM.


Kind Regards,
Dave Walker