talk(1)
NAME
talk − talk to another user
SYNTAX
talk person [ ttyname ]
DESCRIPTION
The talk command copies lines from your terminal to that of another user.
If you wish to talk to someone on your own machine, then person is the person’s login name. If you wish to talk to a user on another host, then person is of the form:
host!user
host.user
host:user
user@host
The form user@host is perhaps preferred.
If you want to talk to a user who is logged in more than once, the ttyname argument may be used to indicate the appropriate terminal name.
When first called, talk sends this message to the user you wish to talk to:
Message from TalkDaemon@his_machine...
talk: connection requested by your_name@your_machine.
talk: respond with: talk your_name@your_machine
At this point, the recipient of the message should reply by typing
talk your_name@your_machine
It does not 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 ^L (control L) will cause the screen to be reprinted, while your erase, kill, and word kill characters will work in talk as normal. To exit, type your interrupt character and talk then moves the cursor to the bottom of the screen and restores the terminal.
Permission to talk may be denied or granted by use of the mesg command. At the outset talking is allowed. Certain commands, in particular nroff and pr disallow messages in order to prevent messy output.
FILES
/etc/hoststo find the recipient’s machine
/etc/utmpto find the recipient’s tty