[HacktionLab] IRC logging - what's the etiquette?

[Mike Tonks]

I'm not a big irc user, so maybe some folks can advise.

I'm interested in a couple of irc channels recently, some indymedia
ones for organising the new bethemedia site, and some perl ones, well
.. because I'm a perl geek.

Seems like to follow a lot of irc channels you need to hang out for a
while, so what's the best way to do this?  I thought of a few:

1) I guess with a desktop machine that's always on, I could leave
chatzilla running or something - but I tend to turn my machine and my
router off to save energy.

2) On a windows server (we have some of these at work) I could leave
it running, but it looks like my work block the ports for irc.  I
guess I could request them opened, but anyway I can't use a work
server for indymedia stuff.

3) On a linux server I guess I could run irissi and maybe use screen
or something to disconnect and come back to the session the next day
or whatever (I've not tried this yet).

4) Then I found an easy irc bot (perl again) which will join the
channel (or many channels) and sit there logging everything to a file

other options?


Now particularly option 4 feels a bit, I dunno, uncomfortable.
Presumably if I told my bot to log on to ALL the channels on
irc.indymedia.org and log them forever, this might upset a few people?
 (I'm not planning to do this btw!)  Are there any guidelines on
acceptable use?

I notice irc.perl.org in the rules say 'no public logging' so I guess
it's kinda ok to log for personal use...

toughts?


cheers,

mike