=== Manual start as user === To get started using znc, run "znc --makeconf" to interactively create a configuration file (~/.znc/configs/znc.conf). Once you have znc set up, you may want to start the daemon on boot, with this in a user's crontab: @reboot znc To connect to znc from your irc client, you will use a command like this: /server : Note that the username and password are sent as the irc server password. === Automatic start with systemd === Starting with znc 1.7.4-2 a _znc user will be created and a default systemd service file is installed, but not enabled by default. If you want to control znc with systemd, you have to setup a configuration first: # sudo -u _znc /usr/bin/znc --datadir=/var/lib/znc --makeconf After that you can enable the systemd service: # systemctl enable znc Now znc will run as a system daemon.