Connection Issues

[CyberiaBBS]

I am having trouble connecting to *any* irc server. My particulars are:

Redhat Linux 9.0
BitchX 1.0c19
I have a router on my home network, and it is doing port-forwarding to my linux box.
I have a list of servers in my ~/.ircservers file

when I start BitchX, what I get is:

·f· Connection closed from irc.servercentral.net: Success
·f· Connecting to port 6667 of server irc.mindsprint.com [refnum 5]
·f· Connection closed from irc.mindsprint.com: Success
·f· Connecting to port 6667 of server irc.mindsprint.com [refnum 5]
·f· Connection closed from irc.mindsprint.com: Success
·f· Connecting to port 6667 of server irc.efnet.us [refnum 7]
·f· Connection closed from irc.efnet.us: Success
·f· Connecting to port 6667 of server irc.efnet.us [refnum 7]

And it just goes round and round and round with that. Sometimes I can connect, sometimes I can't. If I remove the ~/.ircservers file, the BX tries to connect to the 100 or so default servers, but I still get the same results.

Any help would be appreciated.

My concern is that my router is blocking some ports and causing this problem. Please tell me I'm wrong!

[lucy]

if thats the only servers you've got in your list, you have a bad list....

for one mindspring is spelled wrong.

heres a list:
http://www.efnet.info/?module=servers

[orange1]

you shouldn't need port-forwarding just to do irc. i would guess it's some kind of network problem. do you have problems with any other kind of connection?
probably not the issue, but are you running identd?

[CyberiaBBS]

if thats the only servers you've got in your list, you have a bad list....

for one mindspring is spelled wrong.

heres a list:
http://www.efnet.info/?module=servers

As mentioned up above, even if I use the default 100+ servers that are built in to BitchX, I get the same result. BTW, the list came right off of the efnet.org webpage server list. But you are correct, mindspring is spelled wrong, but the result is the same for all the rest.

[CyberiaBBS]

you shouldn't need port-forwarding just to do irc. i would guess it's some kind of network problem. do you have problems with any other kind of connection?
probably not the issue, but are you running identd?

I can ps -ef and not find identd, so I guess I'm not. Does it get started in the /etc/init.d scripts? If not, where can I download from to install it?

Again, this is for RedHat v9.0.

[munky]

identd is usually run from inetd (or xinetd), usually under the name 'auth'

try telnet irc.servercentral.net 6667, see if you get a connection

if not: try traceroute irc.servercentral.net
and see where the trace dies

if telnet works, the problem is bitchx, read the helpfiles, try a basic (non-custom configured) compile with no .bitchrc or .ircrc. if it still doesn't work, maybe try another client.

[CyberiaBBS]

identd is usually run from inetd (or xinetd), usually under the name 'auth'

try telnet irc.servercentral.net 6667, see if you get a connection

if not: try traceroute irc.servercentral.net
and see where the trace dies

if telnet works, the problem is bitchx, read the helpfiles, try a basic (non-custom configured) compile with no .bitchrc or .ircrc. if it still doesn't work, maybe try another client.

This is what I get:
bash-2.05b$ telnet irc.servercentral.net 6667
Trying 66.150.99.99...
Connected to irc.servercentral.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
NOTICE AUTH :*** Looking up your hostname...
NOTICE AUTH :*** Checking Ident
NOTICE AUTH :*** Found your hostname
NOTICE AUTH :*** No Ident response
ERROR :Closing Link: userxx.xxxxxxxx.xx.xxxxxxxxxxx.net (Connection timed out)
Connection closed by foreign host.

Also, 'ps -ef | grep auth' shows nothing.
Another also, is 'grep -i auth /etc/xinetd.d/*' shows nothing as well. Does BX do the auth/ident? Or do I need to run it separately.
Also, I can connect to some servers sometimes, and then again, sometimes not.

I'm pretty stumped here.

[munky]

ok, since you were able to open a connection, i lay blame with bitchx

'auth' would not show up in `ps -ax`, it's run by inetd. if you want to see if it is enabled, grep disable /etc/xinetd.d/auth

if that file even exists

but that would not cause the connection closed errors you were getting. where did you get your copy of bitchx from? installed from an RPM? compiled from source? did you do any custom configurations before compiling?

[seiki]

perhaps you would be better served with an irc client like irssi.

-douglas