Like a lot of people I have my irssi on a server in a screen. This has
been working great so far but my only concerns are the notifications
on the desktop when something happening.
Over the time I have found some different solution with mitigated
results for me :
Use fanotify script with the libnotify-bin and SSH like mentioned here.
Setup your irssi (or other) as irc proxy bouncer and connect with
your desktop client (like xchat) to get notification.
The fanotify is kind of very hacky on a laptop with intermittent
connection and having a cron doing a ssh every minutes or so is not
ideal, not talking about no passphrase ssh key or having to snoop the
SSH_AGENT variable to connect without password.
The via proxy method is not my thing and I don’t feel like having
xchat open all the time just for it and I anyway usually forget to
launch it.
My solution is to have a plugin for irssi notify me via XMPP if there
is a direct message addressed to me. I usually get my pidgin or gmail
alway open and if i don’t since it goes to a gmail account I got gmail
sending me an email about it.
You can find all the information about the install and configuration
here :