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@(#)talk.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
.Dd January 7, 2007 .Dt TALK 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm talk .Nd talk to another user .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Ar person .Op Ar ttyname .Sh DESCRIPTION .Nm is a visual communication program which copies lines from your terminal to that of another user.
p Options available: l -tag -width ttyname t Ar person If you wish to talk to someone on your own machine, then .Ar person is just the person's login name. If you wish to talk to a user on another host, then .Ar person is of the form .Ql user@host . t Ar ttyname If you wish to talk to a user who is logged in more than once, the .Ar ttyname argument may be used to indicate the appropriate terminal name, where .Ar ttyname is of the form .Ql ttyXX . .El
p When first called, .Nm sends the message d -literal -offset indent -compact Message from TalkDaemon (at] his_machine... talk: connection requested by your_name@your_machine. talk: respond with: talk your_name@your_machine .Ed
p to the user you wish to talk to. At this point, the recipient of the message should reply by typing
p .Dl talk your_name@your_machine
p It doesn't matter from which machine the recipient replies, as long as his login-name is the same. Once communication is established, the two parties may type simultaneously, with their output appearing in separate windows. Typing control-L .Ql ^L will cause the screen to be reprinted, while your erase, kill, and word kill characters will behave normally. To exit, just type your interrupt character; .Nm then moves the cursor to the bottom of the screen and restores the terminal to its previous state.
p Permission to talk may be denied or granted by use of the .Xr mesg 1 command. At the outset talking is allowed. Certain commands, in particular .Xr nroff 1 and .Xr pr 1 , disallow messages in order to prevent messy output. .Sh ENVIRONMENT If the .Ev TALKHOST environment variable is set, its value is used as the .Ar hostname the .Nm packets appear to be originating from. This is useful if you wish to talk to someone on another machine and your internal hostname does not resolve to the address of your external interface as seen from the other machine. .Sh FILES l -tag -width /var/run/utmp -compact t Pa /etc/hosts to find the recipient's machine t Pa /var/run/utmp to find the recipient's tty .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr mail 1 , .Xr mesg 1 , .Xr who 1 , .Xr write 1 .Sh HISTORY The .Nm command appeared in x 4.2 . .Sh BUGS The version of .Nm released with x 4.3 uses a protocol that is incompatible with the protocol used in the version released with x 4.2 .
Indexes created Sat Sep 20 22:09:52 GMT 2025