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 :

http://github.com/chmouel/irssi-xmpp-notify