M-x irc failing to timeout, freezing Emacs, when IRC blocked by firewall

[Andrew Pennebaker]

In some network environments, IRC is blocked (e.g., WiFi hotspot requires
HTTP authentication before allowing non-HTTP traffic). In such an
environment, when I try to M-x irc to get onto Freenode, Emacs freezes up,
requiring me to kill the emacs process.

My .emacs:

https://github.com/mcandre/dotfiles/blob/master/.emacs

Is there a hook or other configuration I can write in my .emacs to protect
against this freezing, e.g., by adding a timeout?

$ specs emacs brew os

Specs:


specs 0.8

https://github.com/mcandre/specs#readme


emacs --version

GNU Emacs 24.3.1

Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

GNU Emacs comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.

You may redistribute copies of Emacs

under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING.


brew --version

0.9.5


system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType | grep 'System Version'

      System Version: OS X 10.9.1 (13B42)


-- 
Cheers,

Andrew Pennebaker
apennebaker@42six.com