1WALL(1)                          User Commands                         WALL(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       wall - write a message to all users
7

SYNOPSIS

9       wall [-n] [-t timeout] [-g group] [message | file]
10

DESCRIPTION

12       wall  displays  a  message, or the contents of a file, or otherwise its
13       standard input, on the terminals of all currently logged in users.  The
14       command  will  wrap  lines  that  are longer than 79 characters.  Short
15       lines are whitespace padded to have 79 characters.   The  command  will
16       always put a carriage return and new line at the end of each line.
17
18       Only  the superuser can write on the terminals of users who have chosen
19       to deny messages or are using a program which automatically denies mes‐
20       sages.
21
22       Reading  from  a  file is refused when the invoker is not superuser and
23       the program is set-user-ID or set-group-ID.
24

OPTIONS

26       -n, --nobanner
27              Suppress the banner.
28
29       -t, --timeout timeout
30              Abandon the write attempt to the terminals  after  timeout  sec‐
31              onds.   This  timeout  must  be a positive integer.  The default
32              value is 300 seconds, which is a legacy from the time when  peo‐
33              ple ran terminals over modem lines.
34
35       -g, --group group
36              Limit  printing  message  to members of group defined as a group
37              argument.  The argument can be group name or GID.
38
39       -V, --version
40              Display version information and exit.
41
42       -h, --help
43              Display help text and exit.
44

NOTES

46       Some sessions, such as wdm, that  have  in  the  beginning  of  utmp(5)
47       ut_type  data a ':' character will not get the message from wall.  This
48       is done to avoid write errors.
49

HISTORY

51       A wall command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
52

SEE ALSO

54       mesg(1), talk(1), write(1), shutdown(8)
55

AVAILABILITY

57       The wall command is part of the util-linux  package  and  is  available
58       from Linux Kernel Archive ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-
59       linux/⟩.
60
61
62
63util-linux                        August 2013                          WALL(1)
Impressum