Bip can be used in two different way:
- Old school bnc user style: easy and straightforward.
- Unix service style with and init.d scripts and the logs in /var/log

This small README file explains the usage "Old school" with which : 
 - you do not need the root privileges.
 - gives easy access to the logs of the users of this bip to the one owning the
   shell.

Install bip on the machine that will be running bip (which is likely to be your
personnal or shared server) either compiling the package or using your distro's
package. Then create a configuration file:

If you are using a distribution package, the bip.conf sample configuration file
is likely to be shipped in /usr/share/doc/bip/examples/bip.conf.gz or something
similar.

Create your bip configuration an log directory:

# mkdir -p ~/.bip/logs

Put the uncompressed configuration file in your ~/.bip directory (it's path
should be ~/.bip/bip.conf), and edit it, most importantly the "user" section
that contains information about you and the servers you will want to connect
to. The "name" field in the "user" section is your login to connect to bip.
The "password" field is a hash of the password you will use to connect to bip.
To generate a hash value from a password, use bipmkpw, program which comes in
the bip package and source.
The "name" field of the "connection" subsections are the server identifier for
when you connect to bip.

Once all this is configured, start bip as you regular user:

# bip

Once bip starts, it connects to the different servers your defined in
"connection". Then you want to use your regular irc client and connect to bip.
Point your client to the machine bip is running and set the proper port number
(defined in your bip.conf). You should then configure the client to use a
specific irc server password constructed this way:

user:password:network

The user is the name field of the "user" section, the password is the password
(*not* the hash) corresponding to the "password" field of the same user section
(which is the hash generated with bipmkpw) and the network is the "name" field
of the "connection" subsection. This is how bip authenticates you and puts your
client to the correct network.

Using the default (or sample file) configuration, logs are in ~/.bip/logs/

Happy ircing!