Communicating with the manila team

This is a quick-and-dirty, opinionated, “how-to” on joining the #openstack-manila chat room on Matrix. The room is bridged to the OFTC IRC server, so you can also use a regular IRC client or a hosted IRC service (like IRC Cloud) instead. However, most new contributors struggle with the concept of staying connected, and continuing conversations with contributors across timezones. So this guide presents a simpler alternative. The longer, definitive guide to IRC for OpenStack is hosted in the OpenStack Contributor Guide.

Step 1: Register a “nick” on OFTC

The #openstack-manila channel is hosted on the OFTC IRC server. You’re going to need a registered username on this server to speak to other users on this channel.

  • Navigate to OFTC’s web interface: https://webchat.oftc.net/

  • Here, you’ll be able to choose a Nickname and join channels straight away.

  • We recommend picking out a Nickname that’s easy to remember. We highly recommend picking this Nickname as your Launchpad user ID and OpenDev Gerrit user ID. It makes things far less confusing!

  • Enter the Nickname you pick in the interface, you don’t need to specify any channels. Click, “Connect”

  • In the webpage that opens, enter the following, by picking your own <password> and <e-mail>:

    /msg NickServ REGISTER <password> <e-mail>

  • Remember to set a secure password that isn’t shared with any other digital account. The email you enter will be used to recover the password if you ever forget it.

Step 2: Register on Element

Element is a popular Matrix client. You can find a handy desktop client or mobile app for it too.

  • Navigate to Element’s web interface: https://app.element.io/#/welcome

  • Click on “Create Account”

  • You must pick “matrix.org” as your home server. You may use a sign in provider (such as google.com, github.com, gitlab.com) if you have an account with any of these, or, register with your email directly and set a password.

  • You’ll be asked to accept the terms and conditions of the service.

  • If you are registering an account via email, you will be prompted to verify your email address.

Step 3: Join the #openstack-manila room

  • In Element, click “Explore Public Rooms” (the compass icon). Remove the “Public Rooms” filter from the search bar (bridged OFTC rooms are not listed in the public directory), then search for #_oftc_#openstack-manila:matrix.org and click “Join”.

  • Alternatively, you can use this direct link to join the room.

  • Repeat for any other OpenStack rooms you’d like to join, such as #openstack-dev or #openstack-meeting-alt. See https://meetings.opendev.org/ for the full list of channels.

Step 4: Chatting across timezones

  • Be aware that community members may appear “online”, but might actually not be at their computers. So messages that you send them will not be received until they return to their computers.

  • Matrix keeps full message history, so you won’t miss anything if you close your client. Just scroll up when you return to catch up on any conversation that continued while you were away.

  • You can also view the logs of the official OpenStack OFTC channels to find older conversations.