talk(1)

📦
version 2.8 · 2 versions
, in debian trixie, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

✨ talk(1) — bestie edition ✨

okay so you found the talk page in the User's Reference Manual and you're like "what is this relic 💀" — nope, don't skip it, it's actually iconic. Sit down, we're yapping about yapping. 🫶

💬 NAME

talk — talk to another user (yes that's the whole point, it's literally in the name bestie)

🌸 SYNOPSIS

talk person [ttyname]

🎀 DESCRIPTION

So talk is a visual communication program, meaning it copies lines from your terminal straight to the terminal of another user. Two people, two windows, one conversation. It's giving 1983 FaceTime. 💅

Here's the tea on the arguments you can pass:

  • person — if you wanna talk to someone on your own machine, person is literally just their login name, no drama. But if they're on another host?? then person has to be in the form user@host. 🦋
  • ttyname — okay so if the person you're trying to reach is logged in more than once, you can use the ttyname argument to point at the right terminal, where ttyname is of the form ttyXX. Pick your fighter.

When you first call it, talk sends this message:

Message from TalkDaemon@his_machine...
talk: connection requested by your_name@your_machine.
talk: respond with: talk your_name@your_machine

and it sends that to the user you wanna talk to. 📨 At this point, the recipient of the message should reply by typing:

talk  your_name@your_machine

And here's the part that lowkey slaps — it doesn't matter which machine the recipient replies from, as long as his login-name is the same. Machine-agnostic queen. 👑

Once communication is established, the two parties may type simultaneously, with their output appearing in separate windows. Both of y'all typing at once? Main character energy fr fr. ✨

Typing control-L ^L will cause the screen to be reprinted (screen refresh slay), while your erase, kill, and word kill characters will behave normally — yes, all your faves still work.

To exit? Just type your interrupt character. talk then moves the cursor to the bottom of the screen and restores the terminal to its previous state. Clean exit, no mess, we love to see it. 🌈

Permission to talk may be denied or granted by use of the mesg(1) command. At the outset talking is allowed. But heads up — certain commands, in particular nroff(1) and pr(1), disallow messages in order to prevent messy output. They're in their focus era and do not want your yapping interrupting. 😭

🍓 FILES

  • /etc/hosts — to find the recipient's machine 🧚
  • /run/utmp — to find the recipient's tty 💜

👀 SEE ALSO

mail(1), mesg(1), who(1), write(1) — the whole friend group, go say hi.

💀 BUGS

The version of talk(1) released with 4.3BSD uses a protocol that is incompatible with the protocol used in the version released with 4.2BSD. Not me finding beef between two BSD releases 💀 so yeah, cross-version talking is a no, bestie. That's a real incompatibility, not a vibe thing.

📜 HISTORY

The talk command appeared in 4.2BSD. An OG. Respect the elders. 👑

k that's the whole page, thanks for coming to my TED talk (pun absolutely intended) 🎀

this one's from the GNU Network Utilities, dated February 9, 2019 — so yes, this manpage is a lil vintage but she still eats. bye bestie, go talk to someone 🫶✨

📦 where this page comes from