Now I had /DETACHed my favourite IRC client BitchX http://www.bitchx.org/ like usual, and wanted to reattach.

So I sat there at my ^A:screen scr-bx and I could watch a window popping up and vanishing again.

Upon closer examination, it looked like this:

ailin@eleanor [3]% scr-bx                                                     ~
attempting to wakeup pts-7
error reconnecting to pts-7
zsh: exit 1     scr-bx
ailin@eleanor [4]% _                                                          ~

What followed was a rm -r .BitchX/screen* as well as a mv .BitchX .FukcX, and then an sudo aptitude purge bitchx; with some kill BitchX<Tab> inbetween – everything without too much influence on above message of rejection.

Turns out a certain entry in my etc/hosts file should be responsible for this:

ailin@eleanor [27]% setopt dotglob; ls -lad .BitchX/**/*                      ~
-rw-r----- 1 ailin ailin 7712 Oct 27 02:24 .BitchX/BitchX.away
-rw-r----- 1 ailin ailin 4251 Oct 11 20:19 .BitchX/BitchX.sav
drwx------ 2 ailin ailin   32 Oct 27 23:34 .BitchX/screens/
-rw------- 1 ailin ailin   11 Oct 27 23:34 .BitchX/screens/36750.pts-7.eleanor
ailin@eleanor [28]% _                                                         ~

ailin@eleanor [29]% grep eleanor /etc/hosts                                   ~
89.12.210.87 localhost eleanor
ailin@eleanor [30]% _                                                         ~

And indeed, upon removal:

ailin@eleanor [30]% scr-bx<Enter>                                             ~
attempting to wakeup pts-7
Invalid hostname connect from 89.12.210.87
 [00:05][<Nickname not registered yet>] []                                     
                                                                         [::::]
[0] _

Take that, Bitch(X)!

Summary: The attach (scr-bx) tried to reattach to BitchX from the IP that was listed for the hostname in etc/hosts. I’m not quite sure what a valid entry in etc/hosts would be for scr-bx to still work, though. (Comments appreciated!)

Without that line:

ailin@eleanor [31]% ping eleanor                                              ~
ping: unknown host eleanor
zsh: exit 2     ping eleanor
ailin@eleanor [32]% _                                                         ~