How to replicate the old unix chat?

Dan Lund situationalawareness at gmail.com
Sat Apr 9 17:35:47 MST 2011


If I'm not mistaken, you'll also need to set mesg to 'y' in order to allow it to converse.
This is either global, or per user.
Been like 10+ years since I've even touched this, wow...

--Dan

On Apr 9, 2011, at 9:18 AM, Dazed_75 wrote:

> Looks like JD found what you are looking for.  It is not included in ubuntu by default but you can install it via Synaptic (not via the Software Centre) and you will need talkd also.
> 
> On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 9:10 AM, JD Austin <jd at twingeckos.com> wrote:
> It sounds a lot like 'talk' on linux ( and most  unixes):
> 
> TALK(1)                   BSD General Commands Manual                  TALK(1)
> 
> NAME
>      talk — talk to another user
> 
> SYNOPSIS
>      talk person [ttyname]
> 
> DESCRIPTION
>      Talk is a visual communication program which copies lines from your ter‐
>      minal to that of another user.
> 
>      Options available:
> 
>      person   If you wish to talk to someone on your own machine, then person
>               is just the person's login name.  If you wish to talk to a user
>               on another host, then person is of the form ‘user at host’.
> 
>      ttyname  If you wish to talk to a user who is logged in more than once,
>               the ttyname argument may be used to indicate the appropriate
>               terminal name, where ttyname is of the form ‘ttyXX’ or ‘pts/X’.
> 
>      When first called, talk contacts the talk daemon on the other user's
>      machine, which sends the message
>            Message from TalkDaemon at his_machine...
>            talk: connection requested by your_name at your_machine.
>            talk: respond with: talk your_name at your_machine
> 
>      to that user. At this point, he then replies by typing
> 
>            talk  your_name at your_machine
> 
>      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; their output will appear in separate
>      windows.  Typing control-L (^L) will cause the screen to be reprinted.
>      The erase, kill line, and word erase characters (normally ^H, ^U, and ^W
>      respectively) will behave normally.  To exit, just type the interrupt
>      character (normally ^C); talk then moves the cursor to the bottom of the
>      screen and restores the terminal to its previous state.
> 
>      As of netkit-ntalk 0.15 talk supports scrollback; use esc-p and esc-n to
>      scroll your window, and ctrl-p and ctrl-n to scroll the other window.
>      These keys are now opposite from the way they were in 0.16; while this
>      will probably be confusing at first, the rationale is that the key combi‐
>      nations with escape are harder to type and should therefore be used to
>      scroll one's own screen, since one needs to do that much less often.
> 
>      If you do not want to receive talk requests, you may block them using the
>      mesg(1) command.  By default, talk requests are normally not blocked.
>      Certain commands, in particular nroff(1), pine(1), and pr(1), may block
>      messages temporarily in order to prevent messy output.
> 
> FILES
>      /etc/hosts     to find the recipient's machine
>      /var/run/utmp  to find the recipient's tty
> 
> SEE ALSO
>      mail(1), mesg(1), who(1), write(1), talkd(8)
> 
> BUGS
>      The protocol used to communicate with the talk daemon is braindead.
> 
>      Also, the version of talk(1) released with 4.2BSD uses a different and
>      even more braindead protocol that is completely incompatible. Some vendor
>      Unixes (particularly those from Sun) have been found to use this old pro‐
>      tocol.
> 
>      Old versions of talk may have trouble running on machines with more than
>      one IP address, such as machines with dynamic SLIP or PPP connections.
>      This problem is fixed as of netkit-ntalk 0.11, but may affect people you
>      are trying to communicate with.
> 
> HISTORY
>      The talk command appeared in 4.2BSD.
> 
> Linux NetKit (0.17)            November 24, 1999           Linux NetKit (0.17)
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 08:45, <joe at actionline.com> wrote:
> Also, somewhat related, there was an ability to 'echo' a short message
>  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry
> 
> The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.
>   - Thomas Jefferson
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/pipermail/plug-discuss/attachments/20110409/f4a5cd54/attachment.html>


More information about the PLUG-discuss mailing list