For real-time chat, the Ceph community gathers in the #ceph channel of the Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC) IRC network.

Created in 1988, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a relay-based, real-time chat protocol. It is mainly designed for group (many-to-many) communication in discussion forums called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message. On IRC you can talk to many other members using Ceph, on topics ranging from idle chit-chat to support questions. Though a channel might have many people in it at any one time, they might not always be at their keyboard; so if no-one responds, just wait around and someone will hopefully answer soon enough.

Registration

If you intend to use the IRC service on a continued basis, you are advised to register an account. That will give you a unique IRC identity, and will also allow you to access channels where unregistered users have been locked out for technical reasons.

To connect to the OFTC IRC network, download an IRC client and configure it to connect to irc.oftc.net. Then, join one or more of the channels. Discussions inside #ceph are logged, and archives are available online.

There are four real-time discussion channels for the Ceph community:

1. #ceph
2. #ceph-devel
3. #cephfs
4. #ceph-dashboard
5. #ceph-orchestrators
6. #sepia

Connect your client to: irc.oftc.net