I’ve been reconfiguring my Irssi installation this morning and wanted to document the steps I took. I use irssi on FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE.

Required Certificates

In order to connect securely over SSL to freenode you need to ensure you have the certificate installed. On FreeBSD, this port is ca_root_nss.

portmaster security/ca_root_nss

Configure the Network and Server

/network add -nick 'nick' -realname 'real name' freenode<br /> /server add -auto -ssl_verify -ssl_cafile /usr/local/share/certs/ca-root-nss.crt -network freenode chat.freenode.net 7000<br /> /save

Note: If the blog wraps the content, there are three commands above, prefixed with /. /network, /server and /save.

Now, when you open irssi, you’ll automagically connect to Freenode over SSL.