Bitlbee is an IRC gateway application that allows you to use an IRC client to chat with people on any of the major IM networks. Basically, you run Bitlbee as a daemon, and then connect to it as if it were a standard IRC server (6667/tcp). From there, you have Bitlbee log in to the various networks, and each of the people on your contact lists shows up in the #bitlbee channel.

It’s a really cool idea. It’s particularly useful if you predominantly use IRC for chatting, but you have a few friends who only use, for example, AIM.

From the earliest versions of Bitlbee it has been easy to connect to AIM, MSN, and ICQ. Now that Google has launched their own IM service (based on the Jabber protocol), many people would like to connect to that network as well.

So here’s how to use Bitlbee to connect to Google Talk (aka GTalk)…

The BitlBee User Guide has the basic syntax to use:

Syntax:
account add jabber handle password servertag

So for example, you would send the following command to your control channel:

<@jpm> account add jabber username@gmail.com mypasswd talk.google.com:5223:ssl <@root> Account successfully added

After root responds with “Account successfully added,” you can check your accounts with ‘account list’.

<@jpm> account list <@root> 0. OSCAR, myname on login.oscar.aol.com (connected) <@root> 1. JABBER, username@gmail.com (connected) <@root> End of account list

After you have added the account, type ‘account 1 on’ and it should log in:

<@jpm> account on 1 <@root> JABBER - Logging in: Connecting <@root> JABBER - Logging in: Connected <@root> JABBER - Logging in: Requesting Authentication Method <@root> JABBER - Logging in: Authenticating <@root> JABBER - Logged in

If you are unable to connect, try switching the port to 5223. For some unknown reason, some people must connect on 5222 and others must connect on 5223. There appears to be no way to know which one to use other than trial and error. The easiest way to change the port number (IMHO) is to simply delete the account you created (’account del 1′) and add it again.

For what it’s worth, I ended up using 5222 and it worked fine.

Update: Don’t forget to save your configuration when you are done!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 at 4:42 pm and is filed under HOWTO, Linux, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.