The #centos IRC Channel and Related Channels

The CentOS team maintains its official IRC channels on the Libera Chat IRC network in the #centos channel, the #centos-social channel, and several related channels. We encourage users to ask for, and provide, help with CentOS, but we also strongly favor learning and utilizing existing resources instead of simply answering well known questions. Many questions are so common that formal FAQ matter, and a whole page are dedicated to methods of self-serve Getting Help.

Some questions recur so frequently that an automated answer robot: a bot that usually 'lives' in the channel, will be triggered to offer guidance. The bot knows about these topics and it may be privately consulted thus:

/msg centbot @irc

Other questions are answered by channel regulars, or perhaps a person with no clue at all. Sometimes it takes a few minutes for a new question thread to be addressed, so please be patient. Such is IRC.

Takeaway: Don't be surprised if you are asked to read the channel /topic, or to read a man page on your installation, or to view and read a web page, or otherwise instructed to ask your system to tell you the answer.

Profanity, personal attacks, racism, and age inappropriate content are unwelcome in all CentOS IRC channels. Note that this also includes inappropriate nicknames and hostnames. We reserve the right to remove or mute offenders, either temporarily or, if necessary, on a more permanent basis.

1. tl;dr

Preface: tl;dr -- that is: too long; didn't read is a common reaction to a long piece of writing. Here is the Executive Summary:

Tens of millions of boxes run the various CentOS releases, and so at least hundreds of thousands of people occasionally seek help in the main CentOS IRC channel: #centos on using what the distribution ships. By maintaining a focus on CentOS specific matter, the channel has attracted participants knowledgeable in the distribution. From observation, sticking to on topic matter retains their presence. No channel has the bandwidth to support a free for all approach and yet remain relevant. A quick test is:

Unless a thread is about a problem with a program supplied by CentOS, it is likely to be off topic and belongs in #centos-social or some other venue. Particularly, polling for general usage preferences or other opinion matter, discussing availability or usage of non-CentOS shipped packages or usage problems with other archives (which the CentOS project does not control and cannot directly affect) are simply off topic, and belong elsewhere.

If you ended up in the IRC venue looking for support, and are not getting the results you expected, you need to bear down, read this entire page, and think about what it is saying.

2. #centos

This is the primary IRC support channel for the distribution; it is NOT a primary support venue for learning Linux, chatting (see: #centos-social, below), or asking off topic (OT) matter. It is not free technical support on demand, but rather a volunteer effort populated by knowledgeable people who use the distribution professionally or personally. Polite and on topic people get answers; insulting, rude, or off topic (often abbreviated "OT") people get ignored. If asked to read this page, not reading it or not paying attention to the content of this page is a probably a good way to get ignored. If disruptive enough to the channel, so-called trolls are otherwise removed from the channel.

It can be a very busy channel, with several conversational threads proceeding in parallel; actions such as: 'greeting' the channel, or using [CR] as a form of punctuation, are not useful as they just add noise: Please do not do such. The channel tries to stay on topic, and so please read the topic and links therein to understand how the channel operates (type: /topic [CR]) Watch for a few minutes when entering the channel, to avoid interrupting an active thread and to get the 'flavor' of the channel. If you have skimmed the topic and are asked to read it again, please re-read it and each of the links to which it points. One way to really provoke the channel is to perform a large multi-line paste or some off topic matter, or of content that looks like line noise, and then express regret for violating channel rules. Pastes of more than 3 lines are not allowed; please don't do it. If you feel a need to provide any information that is more than 3 lines please use a pastebin.

The official channel policy is that we "support what we ship", we also help real CentOS users with some of their needs. This does not mean we can teach Linux 101 (hint: ask in the Libera Chat #linux channel). We will not retype documentation in an IRC channel for people who will not read what readily exists. When there is a specific support forum for some software the CentOS project does not ship, you will often be referred to that venue.

Please treat other users in a civil fashion; the channel is not all business, and so passing snarkiness or incidental OT matter occurs, and is not the end of the world. But problems can arise when such by-play takes over the channel, and a sincere and thoughtful questioner cannot get a word in edgewise. Lurk for a while to get the flavor of the channel, compared to: dropping in, asking a question, and disappearing without learning. The channel is logged by the channel owners (and one assumes others, so what you say is not private nor confidential), and the logs regularly reviewed. Persistent abusers are easy enough to identify and to some degree, IRC 'ban' masks are used to fence out well known sources of 'noise'. If you find your IRC client banned, connect from another 'nick', IRC client (several web IRC interfaces are banned based on observed noise 'load') or IP, or join channel: #centos-ops and ask anyone in channel for assistance and to request removal of that ban.

Do not be surprised if you are asked to provide some information about your system. In particular, the output from:

uname -a

and

rpm -V _somepackage_

is often useful -- remember: if providing more than 3 lines of information we ask you to please use a pastebin and then paste just the single line result URL in channel. Once additional information of this type is sought, often members of the channel will make no further response until the requested detail is provided. Such questions are not asked to harass, but rather so that all in the channel may understand what is present on a box. Sometimes a box that is nominally CentOS is not in fact running a 'true' CentOS installation. If you are told that a system is 'not CentOS', read the link about broken V-servers and consider the outline of tests which that page presents.

We heavily encourage the Socratic Method over spoonfeeding answers; reading how to ask questions; and understanding the upstream's statement about backporting. If you find yourself typing a reply that contains: 'I think' or 'Probably', these are signs that you or the person you are responding to need to do some thinking and research: read a man page, look at log files or a live system, or frame a question that adds relevant diagnostic detail instead. Speculation and 'guessing' at technical answers is not useful, so if you find yourself guessing, please help raise the quality of the channel's content by first reading the documentation, and 'hang back' from adding noise to the channel. If some consider that to be pedantic, so be it. That is fine under the policies of this channel as we value accurate content over a high volume of posts. Some questions are sufficiently complex that reading the documentation is the only reasonable way to start, and then perhaps followed by doing further research, or testing on a local box; IRC is suited for a few lines of back and forth diagnostic work, perhaps supplemented by extended pastebin use to display configuration files or the last few lines of an error log.

2.1. What Is Not Supported

• Kernel rebuilds

• Forks

• broken V-servers

• old (out of support) point releases of CentOS

• Other unsupported matter

• Politics or profanity
• Distro X is better/worse than CentOS
• General social chatting
• The airing of personal drama from other channels/namespaces and issues with other network users - repeat offenders will be removed.

3. #centos-alt-images

This channel is for discussion around alternate CentOS images as produced by the CentOS Alternate Images SIG.

4. #centos-arm

This channel is used by those working on and interested in the CentOS ARM platform build efforts.

5. #centos-automotive

The #centos-automotive channel is the IRC channel for the CentOS Automotive SIG. The goal of the SIG is to provide an open-source home for RHEL-oriented automotive work, and to attract and encourage open development of automotive software between commercial and non-commercial partners.

6. #centos-bottest

This is a channel used for testing bot functionality for the project and as a place where people may test or experiment with the bot without interrupting or flooded normal channel conversation elsewhere. We ask that people not bring arbitrary bots in the channel; channels dedicated to bots exist elsewhere on the network.

7. #centos-buildsys

This is a moderated channel used for status and tracking notifications for the primary distribution build system.

8. #centos-ci

Channel for discussions centering on the CentOS Continuous Integration platform.

9. #centos-cloud

CentOS Cloud offering discussions

10. #centos-devel

This channel is used by the people who develop CentOS or add to the development by helping, writing documentation, or contribute software. Additionally, all Special Interest Group support takes place here. Please do not use the #centos-devel channel if you have general questions about CentOS, there are other channels for that.

11. #centos-hyperscale

The #centos-hyperscale channel is the IRC channel for the CentOS Hyperscale SIG. This SIG will focus on enabling CentOS Stream deployment on large-scale infrastructures and facilitating collaboration on packages and tooling.

12. #centos-isa

The #centos-isa channel is the IRC channel for the CentOS ISA SIG. The purpose of the ISA SIG is to quantify the potential benefits of applying existing compiler technology to distribution packages, targeting more recent CPUs, and evaluating different options for how these optimizations can be maintained in a scalable way, and delivered to end users.

13. #centos-kmods

The #centos-kmods channel is the IRC channel for the CentOS kmods SIG. The kmods SIG will focus on providing kernel modules currently not available in CentOS Stream.

14. #centos-meeting

This is the project meetings channel. This channel is logged so meeting minutes can be generated. Centbot is present to assist with meeting tasks. Documentation for the meeting functions can be found here. At meeting end the minutes of the meeting will be made available in multiple formats on the main CentOS website organized by year/month name.

15. #centos-meeting2

This is an overflow channel to help with meeting scheduling and can be used if the primary meeting channel is busy. This is the setup identically to #centos-meeting with generated minutes also going to the main CentOS website.

16. #centos-mirror

This channel is used by CentOS mirror operators. If you have questions about setting up a public centos-mirror, this is the place to ask.

17. #centos-ops

This channel is used for policy discussions regarding the #centos channel namespace on Libera Chat; this includes arbitration of bans and quiets that have been placed in channels against users. We ask that users leave the channel when their business is concluded as we maintain a non-idling policy here.

18. #centos-opstools

This is a channel dedicated to the Ops Tools SIG

19. #centos-stream

This is the discussion and support channel for the CentOS Stream release. More information on this release is available in the CentOS Stream Release Notes. At the present time we ask that the same general rules for #centos apply here also.

20. #centos-social

This is our social channel. We encourage that general chatting move here rather than the main channel. You may also be asked to go here if a particular question is too "offtopic" for #centos

Pretty much, the only things not permitted in #centos-social are flame wars; insults you would not make in a face-to-face social setting; discussion about illegal activities; and socially volatile topics. Use some common sense - if you wouldn't say it over a family dinner it's probably not a good idea to bring it up in #centos-social

21. #centos-virt

This channel is for matters specific to various virtualization technologies and CentOS.

22. #rhel

A community managed channel for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. (Listed here for completeness, since, while this is obviously not a CentOS channel, there's a lot of overlap in content and in participants.)

23. Administrative and non-public channels

There are a number of administrative and non-public channels that are used for various purposes. Most have no public access but for transparency we list two here: #centos-bans and #centos-quiets. These two channels are used to provide namespace-wide ban and mute control and are used to simplify ban-management over all of our channels. These channels' ban lists are referenced by all of our other channels as entries added here will be in effect across our entire namespace.

24. Other CentOS and other out-of-project support venues

Many FOSS and commercial vendors use the freely available CentOS binary products as a foundation to build on, occasionally at differing package version levels than the "current" one shipped by CentOS, and usually adding non-CentOS matter. The 'Cloud' (as that term is variously used, public and private), virtualization, puppet, spacewalk, commercial products such as AWS from Amazon, and more all come to mind. No-one can know the details of them all, and so the project or vendor native support venues, including IRC channels are the best place to start. The CentOS approach is more fully described here .

25. IRC Instructions for Beginners

If you have not used IRC before, this guide will help you get started.

You will need an IRC client. If you are already using Firefox, an easy possibility is to install the ChatZilla add-on. To do this in Firefox, go to the Tools menu, then select Add-ons. Search for ChatZilla, then click the Install button. Once ChatZilla is installed, you can open it from Firefox by going to the Tools menu, then clicking ChatZilla. A new window opens for ChatZilla. Alternate methods to access IRC would be to install a dedicated client such as irssi or use a web gateway such as the Kiwi web IRC client. Please note that often a dedicated client will give you the best user experience and provide additional features that web-based clients are unable to offer.

Once you have your IRC client open, go to irc://irc.libera.chat/ (ChatZilla provides a link to Libera Chat for you to click on).

To change your nickname, type:

/nick yournickname

in the input box and press Enter.

Most of the CentOS IRC channels require you to have your nick registered with the nickname service on Libera Chat in order to join the channels. Libera Chat provides registration instructions and other information that you are encouraged to read. Until you have completed registration of your nick you will be unable to join most of our channels. If you require assistance with the registration of your nick you should join the Libera Chat general help channel by typing

/join #libera

Once you have your nickname registered, type:

/join #centos

to join the #centos IRC channel.

The exception to this is any channel in the namespace that is bridged to Matrix; unauthenticated IRC users will be able to join but will be unable to participate until they are registered and authenticated to nickserv.

If you quit your IRC client and later want to reconnect with irc://irc.libera.chat/, you will need to type:

/msg NickServ identify yourpassword

before you can rejoin #centos. Note that any modern IRC client will be able to be configured to do this automatically. Please see your client help documentation to learn how.

26. What is this ##fix_your_connection I see when I try to join #centos or #centos-social?

If you are experiencing internet connectivity problems you may find yourself being redirected to ##fix_your_connection when you attempt to join our channels. The reasoning for this is constant channel join/part sequences can be a bit disruptive to other channel members that are not filtering out these messages; you've been redirected to ##fix_your_connection to minimize such channel disruptions as a convenience to other users. When your connection problems are resolved you may

/join #centos-ops

and request a channel operator to remove the temporary redirect. Note that often these redirects are automated via our channel guard bot and will be removed automatically when your connection issues are resolved.

27. How to find the list of our current IRC Ops Team

We use a shared ACL setup to grant and revoke op access to our namespace. This access list resides in the #centos-ops channel and is used by all public channels in our namespace. If you wish to see an up-to-date list of our operations team you can do so by sending a message to chanserv requesting the information:

/msg ChanServ access #centos-ops list

All users listed have ops in our public channels.